Real-time geospatial collaboration system

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods are provided for generating virtual three-dimensional environments that allow for simultaneous and collaborate interaction amongst users that utilize virtual reality systems, augmented reality systems, and standard desktop systems. As users interact with elements presented within these virtual three-dimensional environments, these interactions and changes to these elements are propagated to other users within these environments in real time.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 17/839,584 filed Jun. 14, 2022, which is a continuation of U.S.patent application Ser. No. 17/411,910 filed Aug. 25, 2021, now U.S.Pat. No. 11,392,263, which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional PatentApplication No. 63/070,764, filed Aug. 26, 2020, the entire disclosuresof each of which are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.

FIELD

The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods forfacilitating real-time geospatial collaboration in a virtualthree-dimensional environment. More specifically, techniques areprovided to deploy a framework to enable users to collaborate, inreal-time, within a virtual three-dimensional environment using virtualreality devices, augmented reality devices, and two-dimensionaldisplays.

SUMMARY

This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described below in the DetailedDescription. This summary is not intended to identify key features ofthe claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid indetermining the scope of the claimed subject matter.

In accordance with one embodiment of the present disclosure, acomputer-implemented method is provided. The computer-implemented methodcomprises receiving a request from a first user to create a virtualthree-dimensional room. The virtual three-dimensional room comprises aset of interactable elements and is accessible using virtual realitysystems, augmented reality systems, and desktop systems. Thecomputer-implemented method further comprises creating the virtualthree-dimensional room. The computer-implemented method furthercomprises receiving a request from a second user to join the virtualthree-dimensional room. The computer-implemented method furthercomprises providing element data corresponding to the three-dimensionalroom and to the set of interactable elements. When the element data isreceived, the element data causes a device corresponding to the seconduser to display the virtual three-dimensional room and the set ofinteractable elements. The computer-implemented method further comprisesdetecting interaction with an interactable element by the first user.The computer-implemented method further comprises propagating in realtime the interaction with the interactable element to the devicecorresponding to the second user. When the interaction is propagated tothe device corresponding to the second user, the interaction with theinteractable element by the first user is displayed in real time.

In accordance with another embodiment of the present disclosure, asystem is provided. The system comprises one or more processors andmemory storing thereon instructions that, as a result of being executedby the one or more processors, cause the system to perform operationsincluding the operations of the computer-implemented method describedabove.

In accordance with another embodiment of the present disclosure, anon-transitory, computer-readable storage medium is provided. Thenon-transitory, computer-readable storage medium stores thereonexecutable instructions that, as a result of being executed by one ormore processors of a computer system, cause the computer system toperform operations including the operations of the computer-implementedmethod described above.

In accordance with any of the embodiments described herein, wherein thefirst user and the second user access the virtual three-dimensional roomusing different types of systems, and wherein the types of systemsinclude the virtual reality systems, the augmented reality systems, andthe desktop systems.

In accordance with any of the embodiments described herein, wherein thevirtual three-dimensional room is implemented using a hierarchicalcomponent-based model-view-viewmodel (MVVM) decentralized application.

Any of the embodiments described herein may include automaticallyexecuting one or more plugins on a real time stream processor (RSP) thatimplements the virtual three-dimensional room, and wherein operationsperformed by the one or more plugins are propagated in real time to thefirst user and the second user.

In accordance with any of the embodiments described herein, wherein thevirtual three-dimensional room is implemented to facilitate networkcommunications, and wherein the network communications are performablethrough encrypted JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data.

Any of the embodiments described herein may include generating virtualavatars in the virtual three-dimensional room, wherein the virtualavatars graphically represent the first user and the second user, andwherein movements of the virtual avatars correspond to actual movementsof the first user and the second user.

Any of the embodiments described herein may include detectinginteraction with another interactable element by the first user, whereinaccess to the other interactable element is restricted to users assignedto a role; determining that the second user is not assigned to the role;and preventing propagation of the interaction with the otherinteractable element to the device corresponding to the second user suchthat the interaction is not displayed on the device corresponding to thesecond user.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present disclosure is described in conjunction with the appendedFigures:

FIG. 1 shows an illustrative example of an environment in which a groupof users interact with various elements collaboratively in real-time ina virtual three-dimensional environment in accordance with at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 2 shows an illustrative example of an environment in which acollaborative virtual environment service provides variousmicro-services for implementation of collaborative virtualthree-dimensional environments in accordance with at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 3 shows an illustrative example of a flow diagram for creating andupdating a virtual three-dimensional room within a virtualthree-dimensional environment in accordance with at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 4 shows an illustrative example of a flow diagram for joining anexisting virtual three-dimensional room in accordance with at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 5 shows an illustrative example of an environment in which elementswithin one or more virtual three-dimensional rooms are presented withina virtual three-dimensional environment of a user based on the user'sspatial position and field of view in accordance with at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 6A-6C show illustrative examples of permissions hierarchies forvirtual three-dimensional rooms and corresponding elements in accordancewith at least one embodiment;

FIG. 7 shows an illustrative example of a process for propagatingproperty changes for elements to other users in a virtualthree-dimensional room in accordance with at least one embodiment;

FIG. 8 shows an illustrative example of a process for aggregating changeinformation associated with a property change to relay the propertychange to all recipients in accordance with at least one embodiment;

FIG. 9 shows an illustrative example of a process for handling changesto an element for propagation over a network in accordance with at leastone embodiment;

FIG. 10 shows an illustrative example of a process for cycling sendingand receiving element changes in accordance with at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 11 shows an illustrative example of a process for sending elementchanges to be converted into add, remove, and property change commandsfor a virtual three-dimensional room in accordance with at least oneembodiment;

FIGS. 12A-12B show an illustrative example of a process for handling anetwork add for an element in accordance with at least one embodiment;

FIGS. 13A-13B show an illustrative example of a process for handling anetwork remove for an element in accordance with at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 14 shows an illustrative example of a process for sifting throughcomponents of an object to find property_changed attribute usages andenqueuing element for an element_queue_service in accordance with atleast one embodiment;

FIG. 15 shows an illustrative example of a process for aggregating andfiring property changes at a designated tick on a correct threadaccording to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 16 shows an illustrative example of a process for iterating throughall property_changed attributes associated with a particular propertyname in accordance with at least one embodiment;

FIG. 17 shows an illustrative example of an interface through which auser can join an existing virtual three-dimensional room or create a newvirtual three-dimensional room in accordance with at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 18 shows an illustrative example of an interface through which auser in a virtual three-dimensional room is presented with a panelelement invoked by another user in the virtual three-dimensional roomand with an avatar of the other user in accordance with at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 19 shows an illustrative example of an interface through which auser in a virtual three-dimensional room is presented with variousinteractive elements and avatars of other users present within the roomin accordance with at least one embodiment;

FIG. 20 shows an illustrative example of an interface through whichelements outside of a user's field of view or spatial location arepresented with lower fidelity compared to other elements within theuser's field of view or spatial location in accordance with at least oneembodiment; and

FIG. 21 shows an illustrative example of an environment in which variousembodiments can be implemented.

In the appended figures, similar components and/or features can have thesame reference label. Further, various components of the same type canbe distinguished by following the reference label by a dash and a secondlabel that distinguishes among the similar components. If only the firstreference label is used in the specification, the description isapplicable to any one of the similar components having the same firstreference label irrespective of the second reference label.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Various embodiments of the disclosure are discussed in detail below.While specific implementations are discussed, it should be understoodthat this is done for illustration purposes only. A person skilled inthe relevant art will recognize that other components and configurationscan be used without parting from the spirit and scope of the disclosure.Thus, the following description and drawings are illustrative and arenot to be construed as limiting. Numerous specific details are describedto provide a thorough understanding of the disclosure. However, incertain instances, well-known or conventional details are not describedin order to avoid obscuring the description. References to one or anembodiment in the present disclosure can be references to the sameembodiment or any embodiment; and, such references mean at least one ofthe embodiments.

Reference to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” means that a particularfeature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with theembodiment is included in at least one embodiment of the disclosure. Theappearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in thespecification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment,nor are separate or alternative embodiments mutually exclusive of otherembodiments. Moreover, various features are described which can beexhibited by some embodiments and not by others. Further, the ensuingdescription provides preferred examples of embodiment(s) only and is notintended to limit the scope, applicability or configuration of thedisclosure. Rather, the ensuing description of the preferred examples ofembodiment(s) will provide those skilled in the art with an enablingdescription for implementing a preferred examples of embodiment(s). Itis understood that various changes can be made in the function andarrangement of elements without departing from the spirit and scope asset forth in the appended claims.

The terms used in this specification generally have their ordinarymeanings in the art, within the context of the disclosure, and in thespecific context where each term is used. Alternative language andsynonyms can be used for any one or more of the terms discussed herein,and no special significance should be placed upon whether or not a termis elaborated or discussed herein. In some cases, synonyms for certainterms are provided. A recital of one or more synonyms does not excludethe use of other synonyms. The use of examples anywhere in thisspecification including examples of any terms discussed herein isillustrative only, and is not intended to further limit the scope andmeaning of the disclosure or of any example term. Likewise, thedisclosure is not limited to various embodiments given in thisspecification.

Without intent to limit the scope of the disclosure, examples ofinstruments, apparatus, methods and their related results according tothe embodiments of the present disclosure are given below. Note thattitles or subtitles can be used in the examples for convenience of areader, which in no way should limit the scope of the disclosure. Unlessotherwise defined, technical and scientific terms used herein have themeaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art towhich this disclosure pertains. In the case of conflict, the presentdocument, including definitions will control.

Additional features and advantages of the disclosure will be set forthin the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from thedescription, or can be learned by practice of the herein disclosedprinciples. The features and advantages of the disclosure can berealized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinationsparticularly pointed out in the appended claims. These and otherfeatures of the disclosure will become more fully apparent from thefollowing description and appended claims, or can be learned by thepractice of the principles set forth herein.

FIG. 1 shows an illustrative example of an environment 100 in which agroup of users 104-108 interact with various elements collaboratively inreal-time in a virtual three-dimensional environment in accordance withat least one embodiment. In the environment 100, a group of users104-108 may be virtually present within a virtual three-dimensional room102 presented by a collaborative virtual environment service. Thecollaborative virtual environment service may provide users with ageospatially-aware environment that allows these users to visualize amulti-domain space through which the users may interact with variouselements simultaneously in real time. For instance, within a virtualthree-dimensional room 102, users 104-108 may simultaneously interactwith and analyze sensor feeds, network data, collection platforms,existing web/desktop applications, telemetry, tagged assets, imagery,aerial footage/streaming video, and the like. The collaborative virtualenvironment service may also provide an interface to multi-dimensionaldata sets generated using machine learning techniques and/or artificialintelligence systems.

The collaborative virtual environment service may support virtualreality systems, augmented reality systems, and desktop systemssimultaneously. For instance, as illustrated in FIG. 1 , user 104 mayutilize a desktop system to access the virtual three-dimensional room102, whereby the virtual three-dimensional room 102 is represented onthe desktop system using a two-dimensional display. The user 104 mayutilize a three-dimensional mouse to navigate its avatar 110 within thevirtual three-dimensional room 102. As another example, user 106 mayutilize an augmented reality system, whereby elements of thethree-dimensional room 102 are represented within the user's physicalenvironment through use of augmented reality hardware devices (e.g.,augmented reality goggles, etc.). The user's interactions within theaugmented reality environment may be mirrored within the virtualthree-dimensional room 102 and represented via its avatar 112. As yetanother example, user 108 may utilize a virtual reality system, wherebythe user 108 may be immersed in the virtual three-dimensional room 102from a first-person perspective and, via movements detected by thevirtual reality system, move its avatar 114 within the virtualthree-dimensional room 102.

In an embodiment, the collaborative virtual environment serviceimplements a hierarchical component-based model-view-viewmodel (MVVM)decentralized application that represents and abstracts the codenecessary to create virtual and augmented reality applications that areshared across various users, such as users 104-108. This may allowsoftware developers to create applications in a domain space where thesedevelopers may not have technical knowledge to perform in. Further, thismay handle the communication and data synchronization across numeroususers without plugin developers needing to implement networking code.The view and viewmodel of the MVVM may be made up of interactableelements and may be implemented in the client. The model may be made upof interactable elements that are implemented in the library that isused by the client and plugin.

The viewmodel and model may be built of individual components that canbe reinstrumented across numerous domains. These components may attachto core objects of the collaborative virtual environment service andallows for the construction of individual components, unaware of oneanother, into a larger piece.

The collaborative virtual environment service client may handle the viewand viewmodel portions of the MVVM framework utilizing interactableelements. This client may handle rendering, user interaction, andmathematical operations required for proper visual layout of data. Theview of the MVVM utilizes Unity's feature set as well as customrendering layers to help in the display of the model. The view may beunaware of any of the model. The viewmodel may handle listening to modelstate changes and appropriately drives the properties read by the view.

The viewmodel objects of the client may be composed of interactableelements. These objects may be layers binding a backing interactableelement from the model to the attached interactable components on theitem. Interactable components may be dynamic components that handleingesting specific model changes to update the view and also write backto the model based on user interaction. For instance, an interactablemarket (the representation of a geolocated object residing on aprojected map 120) may comprise a geolocation component, a colorcomponent, a size component, a heading component, and various othercomponents that comprise the final object. These components may bere-used within the environment. This same geolocation component mayreside on the map 120, overlay, etc. The color component may be re-usedacross markers, models, drawings, graphs, a user's heads-up display(HUD), and the like. These components may be automatically constructed.For instance, by looking at the property and interfaces composing amodel object from the library, it can be broken apart based on theproperties it includes and automatically bind interactable componentsneeded to display and interact with it.

The library of the collaborative virtual environment service may composethe model of the MVVM structure with the component being theinteractable element. The interactable element is hierarchical instructure. For instance, the interactable element may hold, at its root,a room element corresponding to the virtual three-dimensional room 102.This room element may include collections of user elements and containerelements. A container element may serve as the core data binding forinternal and external data that is represented in the room 102. Forinstance, the map 120, the graph 122, the panel 116 and correspondingdata elements 118, browsers, desktops, and additional containers may befound rooted in this hierarchy.

Interactable elements may only hold data and notify the correctrecipients to changes in that data. A user may utilize classicallisteners for data changes or an element component. The elementcomponent may comprise logical operations and changes that a user wantsto be executed based on element changes or updates from externalsources. The element component may have automatic databinding attributesthat are thread safe and aggregated making use of a property_changedsystem provided by the collaborative virtual environment service. Thesecomponents may allow for an extension of functionality in a genericfashion and may serve as the core to providing logic outside of theclient, such as in plugins, server-sided functionality, and customizedfeature sets that can run permanently, whether in the virtualthree-dimensional room 102 that is acting on the interactable elementdata or not.

The collaborative virtual environment service, in an embodiment,provides a plugin system that serves as one component of the model. Thissystem may drive software developers to focus primarily on their dataand displaying it to end users. Using various event-driven techniques,plugin developers can respond to interactions a user makes, add new datato the user's space, and respond to changes to that same interactableelement data. For example, if user 104, via its avatar 110, clicks onthe panel 116, a plugin may present the user 104 with an element 118that includes a video feed of various features from an external source.As the user 104 interacts within this video feed, the plugin may respondto these interactions and update the panel 116 and corresponding element118 in real time. Further, these changes may be propagated to the otherusers 106-108 that may be presented within the virtual three-dimensionalroom 102. The data presented may also be allowed to be driven bymultiple plugins simultaneously that are loaded by end users.

Plugins may be written using classical programming languages or utilizethe element component provided by the collaborative virtual environmentservice. By using the element component, plugins can permanently attachcode to interactable elements that run at regularly scheduled intervalsor based on changes to that underlying data. This may allow plugins toextend beyond the confines of a virtual three-dimensional room and focuson the data itself and how the data is mutated. Plugin developers mayconnect and drive the data that is processed via the collaborativevirtual environment service.

The databinding that may occur across the aforementioned components maybe driven by a number of libraries and interfaces. The core of anycollaborative virtual environment service instance may be the virtualthree-dimensional room 102, which may be driven by a server maintainedby the collaborative virtual environment service. This server mayconnect multiple users (such as users 104-108) together to be availablewithin the same space. When users join the space, these users may begincommunication of their device's information so that all users can seeand express the same data simultaneously. As an illustrative example, ifuser 108, via its avatar 114, interacts with a marker of the map 120,resulting in the presentation of graph 122 within the virtualthree-dimensional room 102, the interaction and presentation of thegraph 122 may be presented to the other users 104-106 simultaneously inreal time via their representation of the virtual three-dimensional room102.

On the client side, an application programming interface (API) may beprovided that runs on a separate thread processing user interaction andforwards that information to the collaborative virtual environmentservice server. This same process may receive information from theserver, which is then processed and displayed by the client to thecorresponding user.

In an embodiment, users can boot up plugins that process data. Theseplugins may be driven remotely and operate as end users. The server mayboot up a containerized application and run the plugin. The plugin maybe fed with all information about the current state of the virtualthree-dimensional room 102 so that the plugin may begin responding andadding its own information to the space. This may allow fordecentralization of CPU usage of all applications. For instance, aresource-intensive plugin may be executed on its own computer and feedthe necessary data to the collaborative virtual environment service asneeded. This may be done across numerous instances such that clients,other plugins, and the server do not monopolize resources from eachother.

In an embodiment, the collaborative virtual environment service clientsupports loading custom-made plugins to provide additional functionalitywithin a virtual three-dimensional room 102. For instance, plugindevelopers may utilize the element library of the collaborative virtualenvironment service to develop these plugins. Plugins may be loaded froma directory on a user's device, as specified in a configuration file,and are available for the user to activate via an in-application menu.Plugins may have no restrictions on the element data they can access andmodify.

The aforementioned element library may provide various features, such asuser interaction events, to which plugins can listen and take action.These features may be divided into property changes, collection changes,and user interaction events. Local plugins may function in both onlineand offline virtual three-dimensional rooms, while server plugins mayonly work in online virtual three-dimensional rooms.

Whenever a property of an element changes, whether by a local user,local plugin, or remote user, the element may fire an event with thename of the property that was changed. A property may be a simplefeature of an element, such as a color on a marker element. Plugins maybe able to attach to this event and run any custom code as desired.Property changes may be networked, such that a local plugin can executecode in response to a user interaction from anyone in the virtualthree-dimensional room 102.

Particular elements may further include collections of other elements.For instance, as illustrated in FIG. 1 , a map element 120 may include amarker element that may be connected to a graph element 122 that may bepresented as a result of user interaction with the marker element.Whenever items are added, removed, or reordered in a collection, thecollection may fire an event detailing what changes were made to thecollection. For instance, if a user adds data to a marker element of themap element 120, the collection may fire an event detailing thisaddition of data to the marker element and the corresponding map element120. Collection changes may be networked such that a local plugin canexecute code in response to a collection change caused by a remote useror plugin.

In an embodiment, user interactions with elements within the virtualthree-dimensional room will fire events based on the interaction. Forinstance, if a user clicks on a marker element within the map element120, this may result in an event being fired that results in thepresentation of the graph element 122. This may provide plugins theability to execute code when a user interacts with certain data. Certainelements may have click events while others may have hover events.Events may be networked and the session identifier of the user whocaused the event is included. This may allow a local plugin to executecode to respond to user interaction from anyone in the room 102.

The collaborative virtual environment service server may serve as anintermediary to all data and may be represented through one or moreservers. A master server may connect users so that they may find outwhat virtual three-dimensional rooms are available to join. These roomscan be private, public, locked, or joinable. A user can also create anew room to join and open up the room to others. When a room is created,message broker streams are generated for queueing up and down the data.

The collaborative virtual environment service, in an embodiment,implements a real time stream processor (RSP) that is used to connectclients together as well as plugins that are booted up and running.Clients may be operating on standalone devices and may not reside on theRSP. Plugins, however, may optionally be loaded on the same device orbotted on a separate device based on its configuration. Plugins may becontainerized such that unreliable or malicious plugins cannotmonopolize resources or perform dangerous operations.

Server plugins may be supported by running plugins directly on the RSPin an online virtual three-dimensional room. Server plugins may performsimilar operations to those of local plugins described above. Theseserver plugins may perform complex calculations without affecting theframerate of a user's application and may be available in the virtualthree-dimensional room 102 regardless of who connects and disconnectsfrom the virtual three-dimensional room 102.

Plugins and clients, whether local or remote, may perform throughnetwork communication with the collaborative virtual environment serviceserver. This communication is performed through token-based, compressedand encrypted JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data that the RSPprocesses. The RSP may ingest this data into numerous message brokerclusters that relay out to other users and plugins, as well as store thedata to speed up the immediacy of when new uses join a virtualthree-dimensional room 102. It should be noted that while JSON data isused extensively throughout the present disclosure for the purpose ofillustration, other parsable formats may be used.

The data written by the RSP into the message broker may be permanentlystored for historical storage of the virtual three-dimensional room 102.This may end users to audit old room states and playback the state ofthe virtual three-dimensional room 102 to ascertain the data viewed,modified, and interacted with. The RSP may further determine when aplugin or user is allowed to view or manipulate data. This may bedependent on the security level of a user or the permissions given to aplugin.

In addition to the RSP, the collaborative virtual environment servicemay implement a filter server. The filter server may provide users withthe ability to create and join rooms, forwarding messages reliably andunreliably to other users in the virtual three-dimensional room,allowing reconnection, and verifying JSON web tokens (JWTs) or othercryptographic tokens upon connection.

As illustrated in FIG. 1 , a virtual three-dimensional room 102 mayinclude the containers and active users 104-108 interacting on thatdata. The virtual three-dimensional room 102 may dictate what networkingdata propagates to which users. Each user 104-108 may have a uniquevirtual three-dimensional environment in which the virtualthree-dimensional room 102 is loaded. This virtual three-dimensionalenvironment may house a user's rooms that the user may interact with. Auser's embodiment within its virtual three-dimensional environment mayhouse its digital movement and generic information such as their displayname, profile picture, session identifier, roles, and permissions.

Each user may have a corresponding avatar (e.g., users 104-108 havecorresponding avatars 110-114, respectively) that represents the user'svisual embodiment within a virtual three-dimensional environment. Withina virtual three-dimensional room 102, an avatar of a user within theroom may be displayed that may speak, look, and react to objects intheir vicinity. An avatar may have customization functionality so thatusers can be properly represented within a virtual three-dimensionalroom 102. For instance, a user may customize its avatar to appear as athree-dimensional representation of the user's actual appearance. Insome instances, a user may customize its avatar to provide a live videofeed of the user that may be presented to other users within a room.

Within a room, a virtual head may be presented that correlates to auser's head in the real world. In virtual reality implementations, thevirtual head may track a user's physical presence and provides a digitalorientation. This may allow a user to see and navigate the space as wellas allow others to identify what the user is focused on at any giventime. In addition to a virtual head, a virtual hand element may beimplemented for a user, which may correlate with the user's hands in thereal world. In virtual reality implementations, the virtual hand maytrack the user's physical presence and digital orientation. Further,this may allow the user to see and interact with items, whether that isusing a controller in the user's hands, physical hand gestures, ordigitally grabbing objects in that space.

A pointer element may be provided to extend a user's length ofinteraction for grabbing, selecting, dragging, scrolling, and the like.The pointer element may be used with a mouse, virtual realitycontrollers, or lasers digitally extending from a digital hand element.

Voice elements may be recorded and propagated to all users in the roomsthat a user is currently in. For instance, if user 104 generates a voiceelement within the virtual three-dimensional room 102, the voice elementmay be automatically propagated to the other users 106-108 within thevirtual three-dimensional room 102. This may allow users 104-108 tospeak to one another in real-time through use of these voice elements.

Panels, such as panel 116, may be two-dimensional displays that can beplaced in the room 102. Panels may allow for classical graphical userinterface (GUI) interactions with user interface (UI) elements such asbuttons, sliders, textboxes, images, and videos. Panels may also supportmore nuanced features such as web cameras, shared desktops, server-sidedbrowsers, and the like.

The map element 120 may display a geolocated virtualized display of realworld locations from various endpoints and providers in thethree-dimensional environment (e.g., virtual three-dimensional room102). The map element 120 may not be flat but rather includethree-dimensional projected data to replicate and describe the locationsin the physical world. The map element 120 may support active display ofthe map as a projected and geolocated globe that can support thecurvature of the Earth, the Moon, Mars, or any other celestial body inthe same visual space. The map element 120 may bridge projected data ofwater, terrain, underground features, man-made and natural satellites,and other bodies in the solar system in natural relation to each other.The display of the map element 120 may be supported by tile providers,such as a web map tile service or other entities that providegeospatial-intelligence data.

A map element 120 may be associated with map data (e.g., maps obtainedfrom mapping services such as Google Maps®, MapQuest®, etc.), which maybe additive data provided in addition to data provided by variousproviders. The map data may include data with a given geolocation.Geolocated data may be represented through longitude, latitude, verticalposition, and vertical type. Vertical types may allow users to definehow a geolocated item is projected on the map element 120. Map data mayinclude map overlays, map markers, and map drawings. Map overlaysdisplay a texture that drapes over the features of the map element 120at the correct geolocated coordinates. Map markers may each represent asingle geolocated point at the correct geolocated coordinates.Supplemental data may be attached to markers (e.g., meshes, pointclouds, event containers, etc.). Event containers may bring upadditional panels, graphs, an additional map, and further containers.Map drawings may represent sequences of geolocated points that canoptionally be displayed as a Bezier curve for seamless curvature.

Similar to a map element 120, a globe element may be introduced. A globeelement may provide a generalized version of geolocated data displayedon a globe diorama. This may provide general context and awareness at amacro scale. The globe element may support globe markers and globedrawings, which may be analogous to the map markers and map drawingsdescribed above.

Other three-dimensional elements may be introduced in a virtualthree-dimensional room 102. For instance, generic three-dimensionalcontent may be loaded into a room, such as visual indicators, Lidardata, architecture, and the like. For instance, a user may import anddisplay a mesh-based model within a virtual three-dimensional room 102.Further, a user may import and display point-based content, such aspoint clouds, within the virtual three-dimensional room 102 and scalethe point-based content as needed.

The collaborative virtual environment service may further support skyboxelements. Skybox elements may include content that surrounds the user inall directions. This may be used to replace the outer surrounds of avirtual space with, for example, real world 360-degree content. In someinstances, a user may introduce a skybox element that simulates anoffice environment, a control center environment, and the like. When acomponent of a skybox element is not active, the component may bedisplayed as a bubble floating in space. At any point, a user mayactivate the content to surround the user. This may allow users andplugins to seamlessly swap out the current surrounding content. Skyboxelements may include video skyboxes, street view skyboxes, textureskyboxes, video stream skyboxes, and the like.

Graph elements may allow for generic linking of nodes in athree-dimensional space with dynamic edge linkings where appropriate. Agraph node may represent a three-dimensional position in relation to thecenter of the graph. Similar to the aforementioned map marker,supplemental data can be attacked to graph nodes such as meshes, pointclouds, and event containers. These containers may, in turn, be used tobring up additional panels, graphs, additional maps, and furthercontainers. Graph edges may specifically link nodes that are in the samegraph to provide relational context.

The collaborative virtual environment service may further supportgeneric edge elements. A generic edge element may be used to link anycollaborative virtual environment service data to other content. A usercan create an edge element from a user's head to a panel, a map markerto a graph node, a map marker to a panel, a container to anothercontainer, and the like. Edge elements may dynamically store themselvesat the highest level of an element tree to have their links as children.Thus, if an edge element links across containers, the edge elementcannot be saved with that data. There may need to be a union upon thecontainers by creating copies and linking or reattach the containers toa related container. If no container is found, edge elements maycontinue up to the room element or space element which is notpersistent.

FIG. 2 shows an illustrative example of an environment 200 in which acollaborative virtual environment service 202 provides variousmicro-services for implementation of collaborative virtualthree-dimensional environments in accordance with at least oneembodiment. In the environment 200, a client sends user-inputtedcredentials to a user account and authentication server 204 to requestaccess to a virtual three-dimensional room 212 of the collaborativevirtual environment service 202. The user account and authenticationserver 204, in an embodiment, operates as an OAuth2 authorization serverproviding JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) web tokens (JWTs) or othercryptographic tokens to authenticating clients, which can be verified bya filter server 206 of the collaborative virtual environment service202.

The client may submit its credentials via a collaborative virtualenvironment website connection 214 or directly to the user account andauthentication server 204. In response to obtaining a JWT or othercryptographic token from the user account and authentication server 204,a client may use the token in the authorization header of a websocketrequest to the filter server 206, which may result in a room creationmessage being made through the websocket.

As noted above, the user account and authentication server 204 may bethe source of authentication for clients of the collaborative virtualenvironment service 202. Accounts with the collaborative virtualenvironment service 202 may be registered and administered via a webportal, which may be accessed via a collaborative virtual environmentwebsite connection 214. In some instances, the registration process maybe open by default but may be restricted to administrative users,whereby administrative users may be required to access the collaborativevirtual environment service 202 to register account on behalf of otherusers. If a user utilizes a service client to access the collaborativevirtual environment service 202 (e.g., room 1 users 218-1, room 2 users218-2, etc.), an OAuth2 client credentials flow may be used, and theuser account and authentication server 204 may respond with a JWT orother cryptographic token if the credentials supplied by the user arevalid. In some instances, the user account and authentication server 204utilizes a separate database to maintain account information for thevarious users of the collaborative virtual environment service 202.

The filter server 206 provides the ability to create and join virtualthree-dimensional rooms 212, forward messages to other users in a room212, allows reconnection, and verifies JWTs or other cryptographictokens upon connection. On server boot, the filter server 206 connectsto the user account and authentication server 204 to obtain the publiccryptographic key of the user account and authentication server 204.This public cryptographic key is used to validate the digital signaturesof the JWTs or other cryptographic tokens that clients provide withoutneed to send requests to the user account and authentication server 204for validation.

In an embodiment, the filter server 206 is implemented without a userinterface (UI) and is configured to support websocket connections fromclients. A client seeking to access a virtual three-dimensional room maybe required to present a valid JWT or other cryptographic token in theauthorization header of a web socket connection request to the filterserver 206. Once a user is connected to the filter server 206, thefilter server 206 may create a UserSession entity in its database andsends a message on a message broker topic (e.g., “user-joined-up”)maintained by a message broker 208 to indicate that a new user hasconnected and requires a unique session identifier. In an embodiment,the real time stream processor 210 may be subscribed to this topic andmay detect this message. In response to this message, the real timestream processor 210 may generate a session identifier for the user andsends the response on another message broker topic (e.g.,“user-joined-down”) maintained by the message broker 208. The filterserver 206 may be subscribed to this particular topic and may detectthis message from the real time stream processor 210. In response toreceiving this message from the topic, the filter server 206 may updateits database with the session identifier and forwards the message to theclient that submitted the request.

Once the unique session identifier has been assigned, the client may beable to join or create a virtual three-dimensional room 212. Forinstance, a client may submit a request to the filter server 206 to joinan existing virtual three-dimensional room. The request may include aunique room identifier corresponding to the virtual three-dimensionalroom that the client wishes to join. In response to the request, thefilter server 206 may determine whether the specified room exists. Ifthe specified room does not exist, the filter server 206 may return anerror message. However, if the specified room exists, the filter server206 may transmit a room join request message to a topic maintained bythe message broker 208. The real time stream processor 210 may obtain,from the topic, the room join request message and process the request.The real time stream processor 210 may return a snapshot of the room,which may be loaded by the client.

If a client submits a request to create a virtual three-dimensionalroom, the filter server 206 may determine whether the room does notalready exist. For instance, the filter server 206 may check the roomtable within its in-memory database to determine whether a room havingthe name provided by the client currently exists. If so, the filterserver 206 may return an error message to the client. However, if theroom does not currently exist (e.g., the request is valid), the filterserver 206 creates new topics on the message broker 208 with a globallyunique identifier (GUID) appended to the name of these topics (e.g.,“element-changes-up-{GUID},” “element-changes-down-{GUID},” etc.). Thefilter server 206 may further send a message on a topic (e.g.,“room-changes-up” to indicate to the real time stream processor 210 thatit is to begin consuming and producing messages on these topics. Whenthe real time stream processor 210 receives the room request, itattaches its consumer and producer and sends a room snapshot to anothertopic (e.g., “room-changes-down”). The filter server 206 may obtain theroom snapshot from this topic and forwards the room snapshot to theclient, which then enters the virtual three-dimensional room.

In an embodiment, when users interact with objects in a virtualthree-dimensional room 212, each change is transmitted to the filterserver 206 to forward these interactions to other users within the room.For instance, the filter server 206 may read and write metadata to themessage before passing it on. For each element change that a clientsends, the client sends an auto-incrementing client offset, which isstored in the UserSession on the filter server 206. This offset may beused for reconnection purposes in order to prevent the loss of clientchanges in the event of a disconnection and to prevent messages frombeing processed more than once.

In an embodiment, a client periodically polls the filter server 206 forthe last client offset that the filter server 206 has processed. Inresponse, the filter server 206 may provide the client offset stored inthe UserSession associated with the connection and the client keepstrack of that value. The element change data is sent from the filterserver 206 to a topic (e.g., “element-changes-up-{GUID}) of the messagebroker 208 corresponding to the virtual three-dimensional room 212,which the real time stream processor 210 reads and echoes to anothertopic (e.g., “element-changes-down-{GUID}). The filter server 206 mayread this echoed message and transmits the message to all users in thevirtual three-dimension room 212 except for the user who generated theelement change. The filter server 206 may add an additional field ofmetadata (the server offset) before sending this message to the clients.The server offset is the offset in the topic maintained by the messagebroker 208 that corresponds with the message. Clients may track thisvalue for reconnection purposes. For instance, a client may be able torequest messages beginning at a server offset on reconnection based onthe offset of the last message received.

In an embodiment, if a user is temporarily disconnected from a virtualthree-dimensional room 212, the reconnecting client of the user can sendits previously assigned session identifier, server offset, and the nameof the virtual three-dimensional room 212 to the filter server 206. Thefilter server 206 may verify that there was a UserSession with theprovided session identifier which was previously in that room andinitializes the message broker consumer to start reading from theprovided server offset. This ensures that the client can read allmessages that were sent from other users while the client wasdisconnected from the room. Additionally, the filter server 206 sends areconnection response which includes a value indicating whether thereconnection was successful, and the last client offset that the serverhad received before disconnection. The client buffers all messages itsends until the filter server 206 acknowledges a client offset greaterthan the message's offset. This allows the client to still have all thechanges it made while disconnected. Further, this allows the client tosend all messages that the client has generated with an offset largerthan the last server-acknowledged client offset, thereby ensuring thatno messages are lost.

The filter server 206 also provides multicast functionality ofunreliable data (UDP). Unreliable data may be forwarded immediately toall other clients in a virtual three-dimensional room 212 without anyadded metadata from the filter server 206. Unreliable data that ismissed while disconnected may not be re-sent. Additionally, UDP data maynot be sent through the websocket, such that a different form ofconnection and authentication may be required. When a clientsuccessfully joins a virtual three-dimensional room, the filter server206 may send a cookie verification message to the client through thewebsocket. The message may be a securely and randomly generated messagethat the client can only know because the filter server 206 sent themessage. The client may be required to echo this message to the filterserver 206 over UDP. When the filter server 206 receives a cookieverification packet, the filter server 206 confirms that it is a validcookie that the filter server 206 had previously provided. The filterserver 206 may echo this packet back to the client to indicate that theclient has been successfully authenticated. After the filter server 206receives the valid cookie packet, the filter server 206 tracks theInternet Protocol (IP) address and port number that the packet came fromand stores this information in the UserSession for the associatedwebsocket connection. As a result, the client is eligible to send andreceive UDP data.

In an embodiment, the filter server 206 is configured to supportencryption of both reliable and unreliable data. The websocketencryption may be supported using Transport Layer Security (TLS)encryption protocols via server certificates. UDP encryption may beperformed using Datagram TLS (DTLS) communications protocols, which mayhandle the handshake process with appropriate timeouts for lost packets.If encryption is enabled on the filter server 206, websocket connectionsmay be required to connect securely over HyperText Transfer ProtocolSecure (HTTPS) protocols such that non-secure connections are rejected.UDP encryption may be implemented on a per-client basis. For instance,when a user initially connects to the filter server 206 via web socket,the client sends a message indicating whether it wishes to use encryptedUDP traffic. The filter server 206 may track this configuration whensending the cookie verification packet when the user enters a room. Whenforwarding UDP packets to other users in a room, the filter server 206may decrypt the packet and, on a per-client basis, re-encrypt ordirectly forward the message to other connected clients. Each encryptedconnection may have a different encryption key that is negotiated in theDTLS handshake process.

In an embodiment, when the last user in a virtual three-dimensional roomdisconnects, the filter server 206 may terminate the room. This maycause all UserSessions associated with the room and the room itself tobe deleted from the in-memory database of the filter server 206.Further, the filter server 206 may terminate the topics maintained bythe message broker 208 specific to the room and sends a message via a“room-changes-up” topic to the real time stream processor 210 toindicate that it should close its consumer and producer for the room anddestroy any state associated with the room snapshot. This may prevent aclient from trying to reconnect to the room. Further, any requests toreconnect to the room are denied. The unique name for the room issubsequently made available for re-creation.

The real time stream processor 210 may be implemented using a computersystem or application executed on a computer system of the collaborativevirtual environment service 202. The real time stream processor 210 mayperform two primary duties: assign session identifiers and track roomstates for the creation of room snapshots. As noted above, the real timestream processor 210 may be subscribed to a “user-joined-up” topicmaintained by the message broker 208. When a message is received on thistopic, the real time stream processor 210 may assign a sessionidentifier to the corresponding user and send the session identifier toa “user-joined-down” topic maintained by the message broker 208.Further, when a room request is received on the “room-changes-up” topicmaintained by the message broker 208, the real time stream processor 210may attach a producer and consumer to the topics specified in themessage. The consumer may read all element changes and forwards theseunchanged to the producer. In addition to forwarding the message, themessage is processed using the same library that the client uses totrack and receive element changes.

A virtual three-dimensional room 212 may be represented in a tree with aroot being defined by a room element. All element changes made within avirtual three-dimensional room may result in modifications to this tree.The tree may be serialized into a JSON payload. When a user joins avirtual three-dimensional room 212, the real time stream processor 210may serialize the state of the room at that time, resulting in a roomsnapshot. The real time stream processor 210 may transmit the roomsnapshot with a server offset from which the room snapshot was created.This may enable the client to begin loading the element data near to thecurrent state of the virtual three-dimensional room 212. The client maysend a request to the filter server 206 to start at the server offsetthat was specified in the room snapshot, thus skipping numerous messagesin order to join the virtual three-dimensional room 212 quickly. If theclient encounters an issue loading the room snapshot, the client canrequest to start at a null offset and process every change made to thevirtual three-dimensional room from its inception. This may occur if theclient and server versions of the virtual three-dimensional room aredifferent and the client is unable to deserialize the room snapshot dueto this incompatibility.

In an embodiment, the real time stream processor 210 may performwindowed message aggregation to compress duplicate element changes madeover a short period of time. For instance, if an element's position ischanged a number of times within a short period of time (e.g., 10milliseconds, etc.), the real time stream processor 210 may relay thefinal position to other clients by compressing these changes into one.

In an embodiment, the real time stream processor 210 supportspermanently saving virtual three-dimensional room states to disk ordatabase at set intervals. This may allow the full message broker topicto be cleared, especially when no one is active in the virtualthree-dimensional room 212. Further, this may allow for the recreationof the virtual three-dimensional room 212 from its previous state at anytime. This may also be used as a backup if important data within avirtual three-dimensional room 212 is deleted. Through the use of thesestates, a virtual three-dimensional room 212 may be fast-forwarded orrewound, allowing for replay of important user interactions at any time.

The message broker 208 may be implemented as an application implementedon a computer system of the collaborative virtual environment service202. The message broker 208 may be implemented using Apache Kafka®,which may utilize Apache Zookeeper™ to store metadata about topics andother connected brokers. The message broker 208 may be a key componentin allowing concurrent reads and writes from multiple clients and inallowing client reconnection. The message broker 208 may comprisetopics, which are unbounded arrays of key-value pairs. The keys of thesekey-value pairs may be client identifiers and the corresponding valuesmay be the message contents. Messages may be persisted to disk by themessage broker 208 before informing any consumers of new messages.

Interaction with the message broker 208 may be performed using producersand consumers. Producers may generate messages for a particular topicand consumers may read messages from a topic. Messages may not beconsumed when read. Instead, each consumer tracks its offset in thetopic individually and the offset is advanced for each message read.This may allow consumers to begin reading messages at any place in thetopic, which is used both for room snapshots and client reconnection.When a producer's message is written to disk, all consumers are informedof the new message and begin processing this message. The message broker208 may guarantee “exactly-one” delivery, so that consumers receive allmessages and that no messages are duplicated.

The message broker 208 may also allow for horizontal scaling. Forinstance, the collaborative virtual environment service 202 may createadditional message broker instances, with the topics synced betweeninstances, in order to meet client and room demands. This may provideload balancing when numerous users are connected to a single serverinstance. The message broker 208 may automatically sync topics acrossbroker instances such that all produced messages are available to aconsumer connected to any of the broker instances.

FIG. 3 shows an illustrative example of a flow diagram 300 for creatingand updating a virtual three-dimensional room within a virtualthree-dimensional environment in accordance with at least oneembodiment. At step 312, a client 302 of the collaborative virtualenvironment service submits a request to login to a user account andauthentication (UA) server 304. The login from the client 302 may beperformed using an OAuth2 client credentials flow. For instance, theclient may provide a unique client identifier and a client secret thatmay be verified by the UA server 304. The client 302 may also provide aset of credentials that may be verified by the UA server 304.

At step 314, the UA server 304 may process the login request andvalidate the client's credentials, including the provided client secret.If the UA server 304 determines that the provided credentials and clientsecret are valid, the UA server 304, at step 316, may respond with a JWTor other cryptographic token.

At step 318, the client 302 may open a websocket using the provided JWTor other cryptographic token in the authorization header of thewebsocket request to the filter server 306. The filter server 306 mayuse the public cryptographic key of the UA server 304 to validate thedigital signature of the JWT or other cryptographic token provided inthe websocket request to authenticate the client 302. If the client 302is successfully authenticated by the filter server 306, the filterserver 306, at step 320, may return a response to the client 302indicating that the websocket connection has been established.

At step 322, the client 302 may submit a room creation request to thefilter server 306. The room creation request may specify a name for theroom, which the filter server 306 may evaluate to determine whether aroom having this name exists. If the name for the room is available, thefilter server 306, at step 324, creates new topics on the message broker308 with a GUID appended to the name (e.g., “element-changes-up-{GUID},”“element-changes-down-{GUID},” etc.). At step 326, the message broker308 may return a response indicating the successful creation of thesenew topics.

Once the new topics have been created, the filter server 306, at step328, may submit a create room request to the message broker 308. Forinstance, the filter server 306 may send a message on a“room-changes-up” topic to let the real time stream processor (RSP) 310know that it should begin consuming and producing messages on the newlycreated topics. The RSP 310, at step 330, may obtain the create roomrequest from the topic maintained by the message broker 308 and attachesits consumer and producer to the newly created topics. Further, at step332, the RSP 310 may send a room snapshot to the “room-changes-down”topic maintained by the message broker 308. The message broker 308, atstep 334, may return this room snapshot to the filter server 306. Forinstance, the filter server 306 may be subscribed to the“room-changes-down” topic and obtain a notification when a message isadded to the topic. The filter server 306 may obtain the room snapshotfrom this topic and, at step 336, provide the client 302 with the roomsnapshot and a client offset.

As the client 302 performs actions within the virtual three-dimensionalroom, an update loop 338 may be initiated. For instance, if the client302 interacts with one or more elements within a virtualthree-dimensional room, the client 302, at step 340, may send elementchanges with its client offset to the filter server 306. For instance,for each element change, the client 302 may send an auto-incrementingclient offset, which is stored in the UserSession associated with theclient 302 on the filter server 306. In response to receiving an elementchange from the client 302, the filter server 306, at step 342, writesthe element change to the “element-changes-up-{GUID}” topic maintainedby the message broker 308 and corresponding to the virtualthree-dimensional room. At step 344, the RSP 310 reads the elementchange data from the topic maintained by the message broker 308 andechoes to the “element-changes-down-{GUID}” topic maintained by themessage broker 308 for dissemination to the other users in the virtualthree-dimensional room.

At step 346, the filter server 306 obtains, from the“element-changes-down-{GUID}” topic maintained by the message broker308, any element changes implemented by other users of the virtualthree-dimensional room. For each change, the filter server 306 may addan additional field of metadata, which is broker offset, which is theoffset in the topic that corresponds with the message. Clients may trackthis offset for reconnection purposes such that the client may be ableto request messages beginning at the broker offset on reconnection basedon the offset of the last message received. At step 348, the filterserver 306 may provide these element changes with the broker offset tothe client 302 to cause the client 302 to implement these elementchanges within the virtual three-dimensional room.

FIG. 4 shows an illustrative example of a flow diagram 400 for joiningan existing virtual three-dimensional room in accordance with at leastone embodiment. At step 412, a client 402 of the collaborative virtualenvironment service submits a request to rejoin an existing virtualthree-dimensional room. The client 402 may provide its previouslyassigned session identifier, any failed element changes andcorresponding client offset, and the last acknowledged broker offset tothe filter server 406 in its request. The filter server 406 may verifythat there was an existing UserSession with the provided sessionidentifier in the virtual three-dimensional room specified in therequest. If so, the filter server 406, at step 414, submits a room joinrequest to the RSP 410 via a “room-changes-up” topic maintained by themessage broker 408.

At step 416, the RSP 410 may obtain the room join request from the“room-changes-up” topic maintained by the message broker 408 andprovides a return response, at step 418, that includes a room snapshotwith a server offset from which the room snapshot was created. The roomsnapshot and server offset may be added to a “room-changes-down” topicmaintained by the message broker 408. The filter server 406, at step420, may obtain the room snapshot and server offset from the messagebroker 408.

The filter server 406 may provide the client 402 with a reconnectionresponse which includes a value indicating that the reconnection wassuccessful and the last client offset that the server had receivedbefore disconnection. The client 402 may buffer all messages it sendsuntil the server acknowledges a client offset greater than the message'soffset. The filter server 406, at step 422, may write element data inthe form of these messages to the “element-changes-up-{GUID}” topicmaintained by the message broker 408 and corresponding to the virtualthree-dimensional room. At step 424, the RSP 410 reads the elementchange data from the topic maintained by the message broker 408 andechoes to the “element-changes-down-{GUID}” topic maintained by themessage broker 308 for dissemination to the other users in the virtualthree-dimensional room.

At step 426, the filter server 406 obtains, from the“element-changes-down-{GUID}” topic maintained by message broker 408,any element changes from other users of the virtual three-dimensionalroom from the last acknowledged broker offset. For instance, the filterserver 406 may identify any element changes having a broker offset thatis greater than the last acknowledged broker offset provided by theclient 402. The filter server 406, at step 428, may return these elementchanges to the client 402, which may cause the client 402 to startloading these element changes for the virtual three-dimensional room.

FIG. 5 shows an illustrative example of an environment 500 in whichelements within one or more virtual three-dimensional rooms 508-514 arepresented within a virtual three-dimensional environment of a user 502based on the user's spatial position 504 and field of view 506 inaccordance with at least one embodiment. As illustrated in FIG. 5 , auser 502 may have virtual three-dimensional rooms 508-514 open in theirvirtual three-dimensional environment. The user 502 may position virtualthree-dimensional rooms within its virtual three-dimensional environmentsuch that certain virtual three-dimensional rooms have overlappingboundaries within the environment. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 5, virtual three-dimensional rooms 508-512 may have overlappingboundaries within the user's virtual three-dimensional environment.Further, when a user 502 is present within a virtual three-dimensionalroom, the virtual three-dimensional room is deemed to be in an activestate. Thus, as illustrated in FIG. 5 , because the user 502 is withinthe boundaries of virtual three-dimensional rooms 508-512, these roomsmay be in an active state. However, since the user 502 is not presentwithin the boundaries of virtual three-dimensional room 514, thisparticular virtual three-dimensional room may be in an inactive state.

While being present in virtual three-dimensional rooms 508-512, the user502 may interact with any users in these rooms and interact with datapresent in these rooms (subject to any applicable permissions). Further,the interactable elements for virtual three-dimensional rooms 508-512may be loaded in memory and utilizing processor capabilities of theuser's client.

As illustrated in FIG. 5 , the user 502 may be facing virtualthree-dimensional rooms 512 based on its field of view 506. This maycause an interactable element for the map element 524 to be loaded anddisplayed to the user 502. Further, the map element 520 and panelelement 522 may be within the user's spatial vicinity 504. This maycause the interactable elements associated with the map element 520 andthe panel element 522 to be loaded accordingly.

In an embodiment, elements that are outside of the user's field of view524 and spatial vicinity 504 are not loaded. For instance, globes516-518 in virtual three-dimensional room 508 may not have interactableelements loaded as the globes 516-518 are neither within the user'sfield of view 506 or spatial vicinity 504. However, if the user 502moves towards globes 516-518 such that globes 516-518 are either withinthe spatial vicinity 504 or field of view 506 of the user 502, theinteractable elements corresponding to globes 516-518 may be loaded onto the user's client. Similarly, if a different user and/or plugin movesthe globes 516-518 to be within either the spatial vicinity 504 or fieldof view 506 of the user 502, the interactable elements corresponding toglobes 516-518 may be loaded on to the user's client. As anotherexample, the point cloud 526 within virtual three-dimensional room 512may also not be within the spatial vicinity 504 or field of view 506 ofthe user 502. As such, the interactable elements corresponding to thepoint cloud 526 may not be loaded on to the user's client. This mayallow for dynamic, realtime management of Document Object Model (DOM)visual resources.

As noted above and illustrated in FIG. 5 , the user 502 is not withinthe boundaries of virtual three-dimensional room 514, resulting in thevirtual three-dimensional room 514 being in an inactive state. On theuser's client, this virtual three-dimensional room 514 may consume noresources as element data associated with the virtual three-dimensionalroom 514 are not loaded due to its inactive state. Further, the user 502is not included in the list of active users for virtualthree-dimensional room 514. The user 502, however, may change this atany time by manually overriding the room's activity, moving its avatarto be within the boundaries of the virtual three-dimensional room 514,or moving the position of the virtual three-dimensional room 514 withinthe user's environment such that the avatar of the user 502 is withinthe boundaries of the virtual three-dimensional room 514.

FIG. 6A-6C show illustrative examples of permissions hierarchies forvirtual three-dimensional rooms and corresponding elements in accordancewith at least one embodiment. In an embodiment, the collaborativevirtual environment service allows for various levels of data to beingested, shared, and modified through the use of interactable elementswithin a virtual three-dimensional environment. However, there may beinstances where this data is sensitive and only a subset, or none, ofthis data (or capabilities associated with this data) should beavailable except for particular stakeholders. Thus, in an embodiment,each interactable element can be configured with one or more differenttypes of collections that can be used to manage access to the underlyingdata and capabilities of the interactable element. These collections mayinclude read access, write access, and share access.

Read access may be used to determine whether a user or plugin is able toview the associated interactable element. In some instances, read accessmay serve as a catch-all to all permissions. For instance, if a userdoes not have read access, the user will also not have write or shareaccess. In an embodiment, a note on read access is sent over the networkto users who do not have at least read access. This may protect a userfrom untrusted users or untrusted plugins. In some instances, readaccess may be freely adjusted. If a user has read access revoked, afinal update may be sent by the server notifying the client to removethe interactable element. In doing so, no trace is left in memory of thedata and also subsequent updated will not be received.

Write access may be used to determine whether a user or plugin is ableto mutate the associated interactable element. In order for a user toactually mutate data, the user may be required to have both read andwrite access.

Share access may be used to determine whether a user or plugin is ableto change the access permissions of read, write, or share access. Thismay be the most critical type of access as it can mutate the access typeof reading, writing, or sharing. In order for a user to change theaccess permissions, the user may be required to have read, write, andshare access for the particular interactable element.

In an embodiment, the collaborative virtual environment service allowsusers to manage access to interactable element according to variousaccess types for each interactable element. For instance, a user maydefine access to a particular interactable element to certain sessionidentifiers in a virtual three-dimensional room. Session identifiers arethe backing value of a user element or plugin has to determine theirauthorization. Utilizing a session identifier for sharing allows usersto share their desktop or other resources to only individual users, talkto individual users, share only with a single plugin, and the like.

The collaborative virtual environment service may also alloworganizations to define their own custom roles for a deployment of avirtual three-dimensional environment that matches their internalorganizational structure. A particular role may be associated with agroup of users, as defined by an organization, such that by sharing to aparticular role, elements can be shared to the group of users that havethe matching role in their user profile that is provided by a backingaccount server. Roles may be inheritable structures allowingorganizations to define roles within roles. For instance, if a user isassigned a role that is a subset of the defined role on an interactableelement, the user will be granted access to the interactable element.

The collaborative virtual environment service may further alloworganizations and users to provide permissions-based access tointeractable elements. Permissions are a generic structure to defineaccess in accordance with data types. As opposed to specifying roles togroup user and plugin access, permissions can be defined. For instance,permissions may be set on particular roles or users. Permissions may becontextually aware of the data itself and can more accurately describethe corresponding restriction. For example, a permission having thestring “Contractor” can be defined and assigned to all users that arecontractors. As another example, the permission “Foxtrot 2 Demo-8Mission” could be assigned to the role “Bombers,” the role “Foxtrot 2Demo-8 Team,” the role “Complex 99 Staff,” and user “AJudge.”

Similar to permission-based access, access may be managed using pluginpermissions, wherein plugin permissions are explicitly grouped to aparticular plugin identifier. This may be used for releasing a pluginacross a wide domain of organizations. Rather than being defined by anorganization, these permissions may be created by the plugins that arestored on the server. For instance, a plugin called “All_Rise” may havethe unique identifier “com.bombers.allrise” and define the permissions“clingers” and “sabermetricstats.” These permissions may be assed to auser or role by designating “com.bombers.allrise.dingers” and“com.bombers.allrise.sabermetricstats.”

In an embodiment, read, write, and share access is an inheritedintersection of access in the context of a virtual three-dimensionalroom's data tree hierarchy. Access resolution requires a user to beincluded in the set of access at each level of the data tree hierarchy.Thus, each level of the data tree hierarchy serves as an “OR” operationfor access and inheritance is an “AND” operation for access.

In an illustrative example, in FIG. 6A, a permission hierarchy 610 for avirtual three-dimensional room, “Room:A,” is presented. The virtualthree-dimensional room, “Room:A,” is initiated having permissions 611 of“Write: All.” This denotes that all users have write access within thevirtual three-dimensional room. A first user, “User:A” is assigned therole 612 of “Manager” and a second user, “User:B,” is assigned the role613 “None” (e.g., the second user is not assigned a role). Further, acontainer, “Container:A,” may be initiated in the virtualthree-dimensional room having permissions 614 of “Write: All.” Thisdenotes that all users in the room may have write access to thecontainer. The permissions 614 may be explicitly defined for thecontainer by an administrator or user responsible for the container.Alternatively, the permissions 614 may be inherited from the permissions611 for the virtual three-dimensional room.

The container within the virtual three-dimensional room may furtherinclude a map, “Map:A,” that is loaded into the virtualthree-dimensional room. The map may have a permission 615 that restrictswrite access to the role “Manager.” Thus, only users having the role“Manager” (e.g., User:A) may be authorized to perform write operationson this particular map. If the map includes a marker, “Marker:A,” thathas a permission 616 initially set to “Write: All,” the marker mayinherit the more restrictive permission of the map, thereby changing thepermission 616 from “Write: All” to “Write: Manager.” This may result ina restriction whereby only users with the role “Manager” can modify themarker within the virtual three-dimensional room.

As illustrated in FIG. 6B, a permission hierarchy 620 for anothervirtual three-dimensional room, “Room:B,” is presented. The marker,“Marker:A,” is loaded into this virtual three-dimensional room. Similarto the virtual three-dimensional room referenced in FIG. 6A, the virtualthree-dimensional room, “Room:B,” is initiated having permissions 621 of“Write: All.” This denotes that all users have write access within thevirtual three-dimensional room. A user within this virtualthree-dimensional room, “User:B,” is assigned the role 622 “None” (e.g.,the second user is not assigned a role). Further, a container within theroom, “Container:B,” is initiated in the virtual three-dimensional roomhaving permissions 623 of “Write: All.”

The container within this virtual three-dimensional room may furtherinclude a map, “Map:B,” that is loaded into the virtualthree-dimensional room with permissions 624 of “Write:All.” This allowsany user within the virtual three-dimensional room to write to the map.Since the map does not have any write restrictions, as opposed to the“Map:A” demonstrated in FIG. 6A, the marker, “Marker:A” does not inheritany restrictions from “Map:B.” As a result, any user who is able to jointhis virtual three-dimensional room may be authorized to modify themarker. This means that while the user, “User:B,” was not able to modifythe marker while in “Room:A,” it is able to modify the marker in“Room:B.” To prevent the user from being able to modify the marker ineither room, a permission for the marker itself may be defined wherebythe marker may only be modified by users having the role “Manager,” asdescribed above.

As illustrated in FIG. 6C, a permission hierarchy 630 is presented foranother virtual three-dimensional room, “Room:C,” is presented. Thisvirtual three-dimension room may have permissions 631 of “Write:Admin,”whereby only users having an administrative role are granted writeaccess within the room. When the first user, “User:A,” and the seconduser, “User:B,” enter this room, neither of them can change any contentbecause they are not part of the administrative role. For instance, thefirst user has a role 632 of “Manager,” whereas the second user has arole 633 of “None.” The container, “Container:A,” that has a permission634 initially set to “Write: All,” may inherit the more restrictivepermission 631 of the room, thereby changing the permission 634 from“Write:All” to “Write:Admin.” Further, the map, “Map:A,” that has apermission 635 initially set to “Write:Manager,” may inherit the“Write:Admin” permission of the room, thereby changing the permission635 to require a user to have both the “Manager” and “Admin” roles. Thismay prevent the first user, “User:A,” from modifying the map within thisvirtual three-dimensional room. Further, the marker, “Marker:A,” thathas a permission 636 initially set to “Write:All,” may also inherit the“Write:Manager&&Admin” permission of the map. Thus, neither user maychange any content because they are not part of the administrative role.These intricacies with accessing content within a virtualthree-dimensional environment may thus require administrators and othercontent owners to explicitly define access on a per element basis.

FIG. 7 shows an illustrative example of a process 700 for propagatingproperty changes for elements to other users in a virtualthree-dimensional room in accordance with at least one embodiment. In anembodiment, every property on an element propagates through the samesystem to determine whether to fire property changes. This may beperformed to discard any superfluous changes that plugins, the client,or the network send to the user. For instance, in response to a propertybeing set as a result of changes from a client, a plugin, or receivedover the network (steps 702-706, respectively), the system may attemptto acquire, from the operating system, a property specific lock at step708. The property specific lock may be a mutual exclusion lock thatguarantees only one thread/core can interact with the locked content ata given time. At step 710, the system determines whether the lock hasbeen acquired. If the lock has not been acquired, the system maycontinue to attempt acquisition of the property specific lock.

In an embodiment, if the system obtains the property specific lock, thesystem determines whether the value of the property change isapproximately equal to a previous property value at step 712. If thesystem determines that the value is not approximately equal to aprevious property value, the system determines whether the correspondingelement is a chained element at step 714. If so, the system may removethe prior parent claim at step 716 and attach a new parent claim at step718. Further, once the new parent claim has been attached, the systemmay release the property specific lock and return an equality check atstep 720. In some instances, the system may perform the step 720 if theproperty value is approximately equal to the previous property value orif the corresponding element is not a chained element.

Once the lock has been released, the system may determine whether theproperty value has changed at step 722. If the value has not changed,the process 700 terminates at step 726. However, if the systemdetermines that the property value has changes, the system may invokethe property_changed process at step 724. As an illustrative example, ifan element property is set to a new value on a position object that isincluded on a user's avatar, the equality check may only allow thechange if it is visually noticeable. For geolocation changes on amarker, if the value changes at all, the change may be sent, as thisdata may be more sensitive in nature. This allows the sensitivity toproperty changes to be adjusted based on the context of the property.

FIG. 8 shows an illustrative example of a process 800 for aggregatingchange information associated with a property change to relay theproperty change to all recipients in accordance with at least oneembodiment. When a property change is officially registered, the changeinformation associated with the property change is aggregated in orderto relay the property change to all recipients. This invocation ofproperty_changed in response to a registered change may be performed atstep 802 based on the outcome of the process 700 described above. Forinstance, if the aforementioned system determines that a property valuehas changed, the system may invoke the property_changed process 800.

At step 804, the property_changed_event_args are created with the activesession. Every thread that instigates a change may have an underlyingsession handler. This session may be used to register who caused aparticular property change to occur. This information may be used by anelement change service to determine whether a change needs to bepropagated over the network. Further, this information may be used forauditing a virtual three-dimensional room and for applying particularchanges based on the user or plugin instigating the change. Plugins mayalso be given this information when network changes occur.

At step 806, the changes to the property_changed_event_args are filled.Properties may recursively propagate their changes up until they reachthe root of an interactable element. The element change service may onlylisten to root operation changes on interactable elements. A mechanism(e.g., property_node) may aggregate a tree of all properties that havechanged. This mechanism may allow determination of what data actuallyneeds to be relayed over the network while allowing plugins to focus atdifferent levels of abstraction.

At step 808, the local session is appended to the active session. Atstep 810, a primitive INotify_Property_Changed_Event may be fired.Further, at step 812, an INotify_Individual_Property_Changed is fired.This allows for the addition or removal of listeners to the particularproperties that are to be listened to for the detection andimplementation of changes.

At step 814, it is determined whether the corresponding element is achained element. If the element is a chained element, the process 800continues with navigation to the parent at step 816 and fills changes tothe property_changed_event_args of the parent at step 806. However, ifthe element is not a chained element, the active local session isreleased at step 818. The appending of the local session to the activesession and the release of the active local session are used to stack ontop of the current session such that any subsequent property changesoccurring from property changes are captured as the correct sessioninstigating them.

FIG. 9 shows an illustrative example of a process 900 for handlingchanges to an element for propagation over a network in accordance withat least one embodiment. The process 900 may be performed by an elementproperty change service, which may handle listening to all changes thatoccur across all elements to determine whether to propagate thesechanges over the network. At step 902, the element property changeservice may detect an element.property_changed event. This event mayresult from the steps described above in connection with FIGS. 7-8 .

At step 904, the element property change service may determine whetherthe event change caused by a local session identifier. For instance,changes that are to be propagated may be required to have been caused bythe local machine (e.g., the local session identifier). Thus, if theevent change was not caused by the local session identifier, the process900 ends at step 910. However, if the event change was caused by a localsession identifier, the element property change service may determine,at step 906, whether the property is annotated as a networked property.

If the property is not annotated as a networked property, the process900 may end at step 910. However, if the property is annotated as anetworked property, the element property change service may queue theelement property change at step 908. It should be noted that in someinstances, even if an element property change is queued, there is thepossibility that the element property change may not be propagated. Forinstance, if a collection add or remove supersedes the element propertychange, the element property change may not be propagated.

FIG. 10 shows an illustrative example of a process 1000 for cyclingsending and receiving element changes in accordance with at least oneembodiment. The process 1000 may be performed by an element change queueservice, which may be started at step 1002. The element change queueservice may send element changes that have occurred over the network atstep 1004. Further, the element change queue service, at step 1006, maysend stream changes that have occurred over the network.

At steps 1008 and 1010, the element change queue service may receiveelement changes and stream changes, respectively. Upon receiving thesechanges, the element change queue service, at step 1012, may wait apre-determined period of time before sending these element changes andstream changes over the network. This may allow for these changes to beaggregated and to be sent in bulk. Further, this may allow for theelement change queue service to obtain any element changes and streamchanges in bulk, as well.

FIG. 11 shows an illustrative example of a process 1100 for sendingelement changes to be converted into add, remove, and property changecommands for a virtual three-dimensional room in accordance with atleast one embodiment. The process 1100 may be performed by a networkservice of the collaborative virtual environment service. At step 1102,the send element changes process is initiated. For instance, theaforementioned element change queue service may invoke this process asdescribed above. The network service may track all changes and aggregatethese into a single message that is transmitted at designated timeintervals. These aggregated changes may be turned into add, remove, andproperty change commands. This allows for the creation of a historicalrecord of how a virtual three-dimensional room was constructed and moveto any particular state of the room.

At step 1104, the network server attempts to dequeue an element change.If this operation fails, the process 1100 ends at step 1124. However, ifthe dequeueing of an element change is successful, the network servicedetermines whether the element remove count is larger than the addcount. If the remove count is larger than the add count, the final stateof the virtual three-dimensional room at the end of a pre-determinedtime interval does not include that element when it previously did atthe start of the time interval. Thus, if the remove count is greaterthan the add count, the network service may initiate a network removeprocess at step 1108.

If the element remove count is not greater than the add count, thenetwork service determines whether the element remove count is less thanthe add count at step 1110. If the add count is greater than the removecount, this may denote that the virtual three-dimensional room did notinclude this element at the beginning of the pre-determined timeinterval but now includes the element. This may cause the networkservice to initiate a network add process at step 1112.

If the element remove count is not greater than or less than the addcount for the element, this may denote that the remove count is equal tothe add count for the element. If this is the case, the network servicedetermines, at step 1114, whether the element parent is equal to theprevious parent. For instance, the network service may determine whetherthe parent element is the same from the beginning of the pre-determinedtime interval to the end of the time interval. If the parent isdifferent, then it is known that the element was moved to a differentparent but is still in the virtual three-dimensional room. This mayresult in the network service initiating a network remove process atstep 1116 and a network add process at step 1118 for the element to movethe element from the original parent to the different parent.

If the aforementioned checks each fail (e.g., the element remove countis equal to the add count, the element parent is the same as theprevious parent), the network service determines whether the elementchange included any property changes by evaluating at the attachedproperty node at step 1120. If the property node is not null (e.g.,element property changes are greater than 0), the network service maysend the element property changes to a serialization service fordelivery over the network at step 1122. The process 1100 may loop backto step 1104, whereby the network service may again dequeue any newelement changes as described above.

FIGS. 12A-12B show an illustrative example of a process 1200 forhandling a network add for an element in accordance with at least oneembodiment. As illustrated in FIG. 12A, the process 1200 may beinitiated at step 1202. For instance, the process 1200 may be initiatedby a network service as a result of a determination that an element hasbeen added to a virtual three-dimensional room during a pre-determinedtime interval. The process 1200 may also be initiated by the networkservice as a result of a determination that an element was moved to adifferent parent but is still in the virtual three-dimensional room.

At step 1204, the element and its children elements are recursivelyadded. Further, at step 1206, an element network identifier is assignedto the element if it is unset. At step 1208, element.property_changed isattached to the element and, at step 1210, the element is added to thein-memory database for the virtual three-dimensional room. At step 1212,it is determined whether the interactable element includes any childcollections. If so, the process 1200 continues at step 1220, which ispresented in greater detail in FIG. 12B. However, if the interactableelement does not include any child collections, the process 1200continues to step 1214, whereby it is determined whether the element isa root element. If so, the element is attached to the parent collectionusing the in-memory database at step 1216. After this step, the processends at step 1218. However, if the element is not a root element, theelement is not attached to the parent collection and the process 1200ends at step 1218.

As illustrated in FIG. 12B, if the interactable element includes anychild collections, the process 1200 continues at step 1220 and aniterator is created at the first child collection at step 1222.Additionally, collection.add and collection.remove listeners areattached at steps 1224 and 1226, respectively. At the child collection,it is determined, at step 1228, whether there are any elements in thecollection. If so, at step 1230, an iterator is created at the firstchild element in the collection and, at step 1232, the network addprocess is recursively called for the child element. This may result inan execution of the process 1200 for the child element, beginning atstep 1202.

In addition to recursively calling the network add process for the childelement, an attempt is made at step 1234 to move to the next element inthe child collection. If this step is successful, the process 1200 maycycle back to step 1232 to recursively call the network add process forthis next element. This may continue until the attempt at step 1234fails, at which point an attempt is made to move to the next childcollection at step 1236. If this attempt is successful, the process 1200cycles back to steps 1224 and 1226, whereby a collection.add listenerand a collection.remove listener is attached to this next childcollection. The attempt at step 1236 may also be performed if there areno elements in the child collection, thereby bypassing steps 1230-1234.If the attempt to move to the next child collection has failed, theprocess 1200 may continue to step 1240, which may result in adetermination, at step 1214, as to whether the element is a root element(see FIG. 12A).

FIGS. 13A-13B show an illustrative example of a process 1300 forhandling a network remove for an element in accordance with at least oneembodiment. The process 1300 may be similar to the process 1200described above. However, there are some key differences. For instance,an element's network identifier is not deleted. This is because once anetwork identifier is assigned to a virtual three-dimensional room, itis guaranteed to be unique in that room. If this element is eventuallyadded back by a user or plugin, the network identifier may be re-usedfor the element.

As illustrated in FIG. 13A, the process 1300 may be initiated at step1302. For instance, the process 1300 may be initiated by a networkservice as a result of a determination that an element has been removedfrom a virtual three-dimensional room during a pre-determined timeinterval. The process 1300 may also be initiated by the network serviceas a result of a determination that an element was moved to a differentparent but is still in the virtual three-dimensional room. At step 1304,the element and its children elements are recursively removed. Further,at step 1306, element.property_changed is detached from the element and,at step 1308, the element is removed from the in-memory database for thevirtual three-dimensional room.

At step 1310, it is determined whether the interactable element includesany child collections. If so, the process 1300 continues at step 1320,which is presented in greater detail in FIG. 13B. However, if theinteractable element does not include any child collections, the process1300 continues to step 1312, whereby it is determined whether theelement is a root element. If so, the element is detached from theparent collection using the in-memory database at step 1314. After thisstep, the process ends at step 1316. However, if the element is not aroot element, the element is not detached from the parent collection andthe process 1300 ends at step 1316.

As illustrated in FIG. 13B, if the interactable element includes anychild collections, the process 1300 continues at step 1320 and aniterator is created at the first child collection at step 1322.Additionally, collection.add and collection.remove listeners aredetached from the collection at steps 1324 and 1326, respectively. Atthe child collection, it is determined, at step 1328, whether there areany elements in the collection. If so, at step 1330, an iterator iscreated at the first child element in the collection and, at step 1332,the network remove process is recursively called for the child element.This may result in an execution of the process 1300 for the childelement, beginning at step 1302.

In addition to recursively calling the network remove process for thechild element, an attempt is made at step 1334 to move to the nextelement in the child collection. If this step is successful, the process1300 may cycle back to step 1332 to recursively call the network removeprocess for this next element. This may continue until the attempt atstep 1334 fails, at which point an attempt is made to move to the nextchild collection at step 1336. If this attempt is successful, theprocess 1300 cycles back to steps 1324 and 1326, whereby acollection.add listener and a collection.remove listener are detachedfrom this next child collection. The attempt at step 1336 may also beperformed if there are no elements in the child collection, therebybypassing steps 1330-1334. If the attempt to move to the next childcollection has failed, the process 1300 may continue to step 1340, whichmay result in a determination, at step 1314, as to whether the elementis a root element (see FIG. 13A).

The detachment from a parent is dependent on whether it is a removalover the network. If it is a network command, then removal of theelement from its parent is to be handled. It should be noted that thisprocess is not recursively applied on removal on child elements. Thisallows the state of the element tree that is being removed to be prunedrather than shredded. Thus, the tree can be detached and subsequentlyattached elsewhere and preserve its state.

Property changes may be handled by immediately serializing a givenelement's state, while all changes are aggregated into a single propertynode that is used for serialization. This may create a micro-snapshot ofthe element that includes its property changes that are then sent overthe network (e.g., if the property node is not null, as described abovein connection with FIG. 11 ). The property node may be used to include atree representing the aggregate changes that have occurred across apre-defined time interval incorporated into the element change queueservice described above. This tree may include the name of allproperties that have changed. Thus, a node may represent an aggregateset of changes. If a node has children (e.g., child properties of aproperty), it signifies that those were the specific set of propertiesthat changed inside of it. This information may be available for viewingas property changes are propagated upward and fill their correspondingproperty node of their property_changed_event_args.

The property node tree may be passed down until it reaches the “SendProperty Changed Subset Serialized Element” node of “Send ElementChanges.” The properties that have actually changed are serialized in ageneralized fashion. Once a leaf property node is reached, the entireobject is serialized.

In an embodiment, the collaborative virtual environment service providessupport for element components and interactable components, which allowproperties to be dynamically listened to in a clear and concise mannerby attaching components to a given element or interactable item. Thismay be driven by the aforementioned property_changed attribute describedabove in connection with FIGS. 7-10 and 14 . Thus, the collaborativevirtual environment service may manage superfluous changes and delegatesto the correct threads to delegate work to optimize user experience. Theproperty_changed attribute may allow users to designate which propertiesof a given property users would like to listen to and how these userswould like to receive changes.

The property_changed attribute may specify a thread type. The threadtype may be used to determine what type of thread the method will befired on if a property changes. This may be useful for either safelyhanding changes off the main GUI thread or for hopping on to the mainGUI thread. For interactable elements, the thread type value may defaultto the main GUI thread. For element components, this value may defaultto being off the main GUI thread. The GUI thread may run several timesper second checking for all property changes. In a given time interval,a property change may be considered only once. Background threads areguaranteed to not be the main GUI thread to minimize any impact on theuser's desktop, VR, or AR experience. By default, these process at aparticular time interval to not allow plugins to overrun the CPU.

A user may register to listen to one or more properties for a givenmethod. The user may designate multiple properties if required. In someinstances, the property_changed attribute can be applied to a methodwith no parameters or methods taking a target object andproperty_changed_event_args. The property_changed_event_args may befilled with information of the given property that instigates thechange. The argument version may be used when event handling is set to“fire_all.” The initial_event_attachment and event handling argumentsmay be optional, with default values set to “fire_once.” A value set to“none” means that this will not fire the event, such as to suppressevents from being fired immediately on initialization. A value set to“fire_once” will result in the event being fired once even if multipledesignated properties have changed during a time interval. A value setto “fire_all” may result in events being fired for each individualproperty that is designated if it has changed.

FIG. 14 shows an illustrative example of a process 1400 for siftingthrough components of an object to find property_changed attributeusages and enqueuing element for an element_queue_service in accordancewith at least one embodiment. The process 1400 may be performed by anelement event handler, which may be an internal object that ismaintained for every component. When an element property_changed isdetected at step 1402, the element event handler gets, at step 1404, thefirst thread_type element_queue_service. Further, the element eventhandler may queue an object including itself, the sender information,and the property that changed to the element_queue_service at step 1406.Subsequently, the element event handler may, at step 1408, try to getthe next thread_type element_queue_service. If successful, the elementevent handler may perform step 1406 for this next thread_type. However,if it is unsuccessful, the process 1400 ends at step 1410.

FIG. 15 shows an illustrative example of a process 1500 for aggregatingand firing property changes at a designated tick on a correct threadaccording to at least one embodiment. The process 1500 may be performedby an element event handler queue service, which may handle aggregatingand firing of property changes at designated time intervals on thecorrect thread. At step 1502, the element event handler queue servicemay be started. At step 1504, the element event handler queue servicemay perform a custom await for a given thread_type. Further, at step1506, the element event handler queue service may flip the queueingbuffer with the de-queueing buffer. For instance, the element eventhandler queue service may utilize a double buffer, whereby the servicemay enqueuer data to one buffer and later swap to dequeuer all changeson that buffer on the designated time interval.

At step 1508, the element event handler queue service tries to de-queuethe property_change and element event handler pair. If this isunsuccessful, the element event handler queue service may, at step 1510,call reset_invoked_events on all processed element event handlers andperform step 1504. However, if the de-queue process is successful, theelement event handler queue service may invoke_all with arguments onelement event handler at step 1512. For instance, as the element eventhandler queue service de-queues changes, the element event handler queueservice fires calls back into the original element event handler. Theelement event handler may track which methods it already fired and mayno longer fire designated more than their element handling rules. Onceall events are fired for a given time interval, the element eventhandler queue service iterates through all called element event handlersand resets their tracking of fired methods so that they may be fired onthe next time interval.

FIG. 16 shows an illustrative example of a process 1600 for iteratingthrough all property_changed attributes associated with a particularproperty name in accordance with at least one embodiment. The process1600 may be initiated by performing invoke_all with property argumentsat step 1602. Subsequently, at step 1604, the first property_changedattribute pair information if obtained. From this pair, at step 1606, itis determined what event handling type is designated for the pair. Ifthe event handling type is set to “none,” the property_change is deniedat step 1608 and a “no” response is provided. Alternatively, if theevent handling type is set to “fire_all,” the property_change is alwaysallowed at step 1612 and a “yes” response is provided. However, if theevent handling type is set to “fire_once,” it is determined, at step1610, whether the property_change has already been invoked and, based onthis determination, a value is returned.

Based on the returned value, it is determined whether to allow eventfiring to a property_changed method at step 1614. If so, theproperty_changed method component is fired at step 1616. The event thatis fired is then stored to check for future checks at step 1610. Oncethe property_changed method component has been fired, an attempt ismade, at step 1618, to try and get the next property_changed attributepair information. If this attempt is successful, the process 1600 cyclesback to step 1606, whereby the event handling type for this pair isdetermined. However, if this attempt fails, the process 1600 ends atstep 1620.

FIG. 17 shows an illustrative example of an interface 1700 through whicha user can join an existing virtual three-dimensional room or create anew virtual three-dimensional room in accordance with at least oneembodiment. Through the interface 1700, a user may provide the name ofan existing virtual three-dimensional room that the user wishes to join.For instance, the user may wish to reconnect to the existing virtualthree-dimensional room after a disconnect event. Alternatively, the usermay wish to join an existing virtual three-dimensional room created byanother user to collaborate with the user.

The interface 1700 may further provide a user with an option to create anew virtual three-dimensional room and optionally define the allowedroles for this room. The user may select a name for the new virtualthree-dimensional room, which the filter server may evaluate todetermine whether this name is currently being used by another virtualthree-dimensional room. If so, the filter server may update theinterface 1700 to indicate that the name is not available. This mayprompt the user to provide a different name. Once the user has opted toeither join an existing virtual three-dimensional room or create a newvirtual three-dimensional room, the collaborative virtual environmentservice may perform the operations described above in connection withFIGS. 3 and 4 to allow the user to access the virtual three-dimensionalroom and access any elements (subject to a set of permissions) withinthe virtual three-dimensional room.

FIG. 18 shows an illustrative example of an interface 1800 through whicha user in a virtual three-dimensional room is presented with a panelelement invoked by another user in the virtual three-dimensional roomand with an avatar of the other user in accordance with at least oneembodiment. In the environment 1800, a user may be within the boundariesof a virtual three-dimensional room that includes another user and oneor more elements that the user may interact with. For example, asillustrated in FIG. 18 , the other user may have loaded a panel elementinto the virtual three-dimensional room. Through the panel, the otheruser may select one or more plugins and/or elements that may be loadedinto the virtual three-dimensional room. The panel element may be placedwithin the room from the perspective of the other user such that thepanel element is spatially oriented at an angle from the user'sperspective.

In an embodiment, the user and the other user within the virtualthree-dimensional room can simultaneously interact with the panelelement. For instance, while the other user is interacting with thepanel element to select a plugin and/or element that is to be loadedinto the virtual three-dimensional room, the user may alsosimultaneously interact with the panel element (e.g., move the panelelement within the room, select plugins and/or elements from the panelelement, resize the panel element, etc.). This may allow the users towork collaboratively within the virtual three-dimensional room in realtime.

In an embodiment, the panel element can be subject to one or morepolicies, whereby only users granted permission to interact with thepanel element may be able to do so. The different permission models aredescribed in greater detail above in connection with FIGS. 6A-6C. Forinstance, if the panel element is subject to a policy whereby only usersassigned a role of “Manager” can read the panel element, users that arenot assigned this role are unable to read, write, or share the panelelement. Thus, while a user with the “Manager” role may readily interactwith the panel element, a user without this role may not be able to seethe panel element within the virtual three-dimensional room or otherwisebe able to read any of the features of the panel element.

In an embodiment, a user's spatial vicinity can be graphicallyrepresented within the virtual three-dimensional room so that the usermay readily identify its spatial vicinity and determine which elementsare available within its spatial vicinity. For example, as illustratedin FIG. 18 , the user's spatial vicinity may be represented by ahighlighted radial area extending from the user's position within thevirtual three-dimensional room to an outer limit. In some instances, theuser may configure the size of its spatial vicinity. The spatialvicinity may be used to define which interactable elements are to beloaded on to the user's client at a given time. This may allow fordynamic, realtime management of DOM visual resources.

As an illustrative example of the use of the user's spatial vicinity,the panel element illustrated in FIG. 18 may be loaded on to the user'sclient as a result of the panel element being within the spatialvicinity and field of view of the user. However, had the panel elementbeen loaded into the virtual three-dimensional room at a locationoutside of the user's spatial vicinity and field of view, the panelelement may not have been loaded on to the user's client. If the userwere to move within the virtual three-dimensional room such that itsspatial vicinity or field of view encompassed the panel element, thepanel element at this time would be loaded on to the user's client andpresented to the user via the interface 1800.

FIG. 19 shows an illustrative example of an interface 1900 through whicha user in a virtual three-dimensional room is presented with variousinteractive elements and avatars of other users present within the roomin accordance with at least one embodiment. In the environment 1900, auser may be present within a virtual three-dimensional room within itsvirtual three-dimensional environment. This virtual three-dimensionalroom may include various interactable elements, such as atwo-dimensional map, a three-dimensional globe, several panel elements,and several markers positioned on the two-dimensional map.

As noted above, a virtual three-dimensional room may be representedusing a hierarchical tree structure, whereby the room serves as a rootnode in the tree and other interactable elements may be hierarchicallyplaced within the tree structure as children of the root node.Permissions may be defined for each of the elements (nodes) of thehierarchical tree for the room. For instance, the virtualthree-dimensional room may be subject to no permissions (e.g., anyonecan access the room and perform operations within the room) whereas thetwo-dimensional map, globe element, panel element, marker, etc. may besubject to one or more permissions as defined by an administrator,owner, or other authorized entity for the particular element. As notedabove, permissions may be inherited from a parent node. For instance, ifaccess to a marker is restricted to users being assigned the role of“Manager,” any elements stemming from interaction with the marker (e.g.,a panel, a dataset, etc.) are also made subject to this restriction,regardless of whether the restriction is explicitly defined for thesechild elements or not.

In an embodiment, the fidelity (e.g., resolution, display quality, etc.)of an element presented within the virtual three-dimensional room for aparticular user may be determined based on the user's spatial proximityto the element. For instance, as illustrated in FIG. 19 , while thetwo-dimensional map may be loaded for the user as a result of the mapbeing within the user's spatial vicinity and field of view, portions ofthe map that are further away from the user may be loaded with lowerfidelity in order to reduce the amount of resources required to presentthe two-dimensional map to the user within the virtual three-dimensionalenvironment. As the user moves within the virtual three-dimensionalroom, features of the two-dimensional map originally loaded with lowerfidelity may be updated to provide higher fidelity as the user drawscloser to these features.

In an embodiment, the visibility of an element and/or the dataassociated with the element that is presented within the virtualthree-dimensional room can be determined based on the user's spatialproximity to the element. For example, as the user moves towards anelement within the virtual three-dimensional room, the visibility of theelement may increase such that the element may become more visible tothe user. This may allow the user to better interact with elements asthe user moves closer to the element within the virtualthree-dimensional room. Further, in some instances, as the user movestowards an element within the virtual three-dimensional room, the datapresented in association with the element may change. For example, asthe user moves towards an element within the virtual three-dimensionalroom, the amount and/or types of data associated with the element andpresented to the user within the virtual three-dimensional room maydynamically change.

In an embodiment, as a user moves within the virtual three-dimensionalroom, elements that enter within spatial proximity (e.g., within aparticular radius and/or within the user's field of view) of the userare loaded with greater granularity. For example, any elements that arewithin a radial distance and/or within a field of view of the userwithin the virtual three-dimensional room may be loaded, whereas anyelements that are outside of this radial distance and/or of the user'sfield of view may be presented with lower fidelity, less data, lessvisibility, and the like. Alternatively, any elements that are no longerwithin spatial proximity of the user may be removed from memory and,thus, may no longer consumer any of the user's client resources. Thus,as the user moves through the virtual three-dimensional room, thepresentation of different elements within the virtual three-dimensionalroom may be dynamically changed in real time based on the position ofthese elements with relation to the user's location within the virtualthree-dimensional room and the distance from the user's location to eachof these elements.

The dynamic and real time changes to the presentation of differentelements within the virtual three-dimensional room may reduce theoverall CPU load, memory load, network bandwidth usage, and otherresource usage for the user's client device. For example, as the usermoves within the virtual three-dimensional room, only the elementswithin the user's spatial proximity and/or field of view may be loadedon to the user's client device, whereby the granularity of theseelements may differ as a function of the user's distance to theseelements. Any elements that are no longer within the user's spatialproximity and/or field of view may be unloaded such that these elementsconsume fewer or no resources of the client's device.

In an embodiment, the presentation of different elements within thevirtual three-dimensional room can be dynamically changed in real timebased on the user's network quality of service (QoS) and/or otherperformance characteristics of the user's client device (e.g., CPU load,memory load, etc.). For instance, a filter server (e.g., filter server206 described above in connection with FIG. 2 ) may monitor, in realtime, the network QoS and other performance characteristics of theuser's client device as the user moves within the virtualthree-dimensional room and interacts with one or more elements withinthe virtual three-dimensional room. This monitoring may be performedusing a load-on-demand (LOD) process that may be configurable per clientdevice (e.g., user) based on the performance characteristics of theclient device.

If the filter server detects a degradation in the performance of theuser's client device (e.g., a drop in the network QoS, a spike inresource utilization of the user's client device, etc.), the filterserver may dynamically, and in real time, adjust the presentation of thedifferent elements within the virtual three-dimensional room such thatthe user may continue to interact with these elements withoutexperiencing any lag or other detrimental impact to the user's abilityto interact with these elements and with the virtual three-dimensionalroom. For example, the granularity of elements within the user's spatialproximity and/or field of view within the virtual three-dimensional roommay be dynamically adjusted based on the performance of the user'sclient device. In some examples, the filter server can additionally, oralternatively, dynamically adjust the user's radial distance and/orfield of view such that the user may need to be closer to an elementwithin the virtual three-dimensional room in order for the element to bepresented with greater granularity or fidelity.

In an embodiment, a user can manually determine how presentation ofdifferent elements within the virtual three-dimensional room is to bechanged in the event of degradation of performance of the user's clientdevice as the user moves within the virtual three-dimensional room andinteracts with different elements within the virtual three-dimensionalroom. For example, a user may manually manage the virtualthree-dimensional room hierarchy to better serve its purposes. As notedabove, an interactable element may be hierarchical in structure, wherethe interactable element may hold, at its root, a room elementcorresponding to the virtual three-dimensional room. This room elementmay include collections of user elements and container elements. Acontainer element may serve as the core data binding for internal andexternal data that is represented in the virtual three-dimensional room.Thus, the user may manually manage this hierarchy such that differentelements are presented subject to the user's requirements.

As noted above, users within the virtual three-dimensional room maysimultaneously interact with the various elements within the virtualthree-dimensional room and any changes made to these elements may bepropagated to the users within the room. For instance, as the user“floridaops” interacts with a panel element and globe, other userswithin the virtual three-dimensional room may witness these interactionsand view any changes made to these elements in real time. Further, usersmay simultaneously interact with these elements as the user “floridaops”also interacts with these elements.

In some instances, interaction with a particular element within thevirtual three-dimensional room may result in the loading of anotherelement. For instance, as illustrated in FIG. 19 , when a user interactswith a marker element, a panel element may be loaded into the virtualthree-dimensional room. The panel element may include data correspondingto the marker element or otherwise associated with the marker element.The user may interact with the panel element to read, write, and/orshare data (subject to any permissions defined for the panel element andunderlying data). Further, interactions with the panel element may bepropagated to the other users within the room, subject to anypermissions established for the various elements of the room.

FIG. 20 shows an illustrative example of an interface 2000 through whichelements outside of a user's field of view or spatial location arepresented with lower fidelity compared to other elements within theuser's field of view or spatial location in accordance with at least oneembodiment. As noted above, a user's spatial vicinity and field of viewwithin a virtual three-dimensional environment may be used to determinewhat elements are loaded on to the user's client. A user's spatialvicinity, as illustrated in FIG. 20 and described above in connectionwith FIG. 5 , may be represented by a highlighted radial area extendingfrom the user's position within the virtual three-dimensionalenvironment to a pre-defined outer limit. In some instances, the usermay configure the size of its spatial vicinity. The spatial vicinity maybe used to define which interactable elements are to be loaded on to theuser's client at a given time. This may allow for dynamic, realtimemanagement of DOM visual resources.

As illustrated in FIG. 20 , a map including various markers and otherelements may be present within a virtual three-dimensional room that theuser is a member of. The map and its corresponding elements, whilewithin the field of view of the user, may be outside of the user'sspatial vicinity. As a result, the map may be loaded on to the user'sclient at a low fidelity, whereby features of the map and itscorresponding elements may be presented at a low resolution. However,elements that are within the user's spatial vicinity and field of view(e.g., the globe element and panel element, as illustrated in FIG. 20 )may be presented at a higher fidelity, whereby the various features ofthese elements may be loaded on to the user's client and presented tothe user within the virtual three-dimensional environment. This isfurther described above in connection with FIG. 5 .

If the user moves within its virtual three-dimensional environmenttowards the map and its corresponding elements, the user's client mayobtain from the collaborative virtual environment service additionalfeatures of these elements and load these on to the user's virtualthree-dimensional environment. This may allow the user to readily viewadditional details and features of these elements as it draws closer tothem, thus changing the user's perspective in real time.

FIG. 21 illustrates a computing system architecture 2100 includingvarious components in electrical communication with each other using aconnection 2106, such as a bus, in accordance with some implementations.Example system architecture 2100 includes a processing unit (CPU orprocessor) 2104 and a system connection 2106 that couples various systemcomponents including the system memory 2120, such as ROM 2118 and RAM2116, to the processor 2104. The system architecture 2100 can include acache 2102 of high-speed memory connected directly with, in closeproximity to, or integrated as part of the processor 2104. The systemarchitecture 2100 can copy data from the memory 2120 and/or the storagedevice 2108 to the cache 2102 for quick access by the processor 2104. Inthis way, the cache can provide a performance boost that avoidsprocessor 2104 delays while waiting for data. These and other modulescan control or be configured to control the processor 2104 to performvarious actions.

Other system memory 2120 may be available for use as well. The memory2120 can include multiple different types of memory with differentperformance characteristics. The processor 2104 can include any generalpurpose processor and a hardware or software service, such as service 12110, service 2 2112, and service 3 2114 stored in storage device 2108,configured to control the processor 2104 as well as a special-purposeprocessor where software instructions are incorporated into the actualprocessor design. The processor 2104 may be a completely self-containedcomputing system, containing multiple cores or processors, a bus, memorycontroller, cache, etc. A multi-core processor may be symmetric orasymmetric.

To enable user interaction with the computing system architecture 2100,an input device 2122 can represent any number of input mechanisms, suchas a microphone for speech, a touch-sensitive screen for gesture orgraphical input, keyboard, mouse, motion input, speech and so forth. Anoutput device 2124 can also be one or more of a number of outputmechanisms known to those of skill in the art. In some instances,multimodal systems can enable a user to provide multiple types of inputto communicate with the computing system architecture 2100. Thecommunications interface 2126 can generally govern and manage the userinput and system output. There is no restriction on operating on anyparticular hardware arrangement and therefore the basic features heremay easily be substituted for improved hardware or firmware arrangementsas they are developed.

Storage device 2108 is a non-volatile memory and can be a hard disk orother types of computer readable media which can store data that areaccessible by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memorycards, solid state memory devices, digital versatile disks, cartridges,RAMs 2116, ROM 2118, and hybrids thereof.

The storage device 2108 can include services 2110, 2112, 2114 forcontrolling the processor 2104. Other hardware or software modules arecontemplated. The storage device 2108 can be connected to the systemconnection 2106. In one aspect, a hardware module that performs aparticular function can include the software component stored in acomputer-readable medium in connection with the necessary hardwarecomponents, such as the processor 2104, connection 2106, output device2124, and so forth, to carry out the function.

The disclosed methods can be performed using a computing system. Anexample computing system can include a processor (e.g., a centralprocessing unit), memory, non-volatile memory, and an interface device.The memory may store data and/or and one or more code sets, software,scripts, etc. The components of the computer system can be coupledtogether via a bus or through some other known or convenient device. Theprocessor may be configured to carry out all or part of methodsdescribed herein for example by executing code for example stored inmemory. One or more of a user device or computer, a provider server orsystem, or a suspended database update system may include the componentsof the computing system or variations on such a system.

This disclosure contemplates the computer system taking any suitablephysical form, including, but not limited to a Point-of-Sale system(“POS”). As example and not by way of limitation, the computer systemmay be an embedded computer system, a system-on-chip (SOC), asingle-board computer system (SBC) (such as, for example, acomputer-on-module (COM) or system-on-module (SOM)), a desktop computersystem, a laptop or notebook computer system, an interactive kiosk, amainframe, a mesh of computer systems, a mobile telephone, a personaldigital assistant (PDA), a server, or a combination of two or more ofthese. Where appropriate, the computer system may include one or morecomputer systems; be unitary or distributed; span multiple locations;span multiple machines; and/or reside in a cloud, which may include oneor more cloud components in one or more networks. Where appropriate, oneor more computer systems may perform without substantial spatial ortemporal limitation one or more steps of one or more methods describedor illustrated herein. As an example and not by way of limitation, oneor more computer systems may perform in real time or in batch mode oneor more steps of one or more methods described or illustrated herein.One or more computer systems may perform at different times or atdifferent locations one or more steps of one or more methods describedor illustrated herein, where appropriate.

The processor may be, for example, be a conventional microprocessor suchas an Intel Pentium microprocessor or Motorola power PC microprocessor.One of skill in the relevant art will recognize that the terms“machine-readable (storage) medium” or “computer-readable (storage)medium” include any type of device that is accessible by the processor.

The memory can be coupled to the processor by, for example, a bus. Thememory can include, by way of example but not limitation, random accessmemory (RAM), such as dynamic RAM (DRAM) and static RAM (SRAM). Thememory can be local, remote, or distributed.

The bus can also couple the processor to the non-volatile memory anddrive unit. The non-volatile memory is often a magnetic floppy or harddisk, a magnetic-optical disk, an optical disk, a read-only memory(ROM), such as a CD-ROM, EPROM, or EEPROM, a magnetic or optical card,or another form of storage for large amounts of data. Some of this datais often written, by a direct memory access process, into memory duringexecution of software in the computer. The non-volatile storage can belocal, remote, or distributed. The non-volatile memory is optionalbecause systems can be created with all applicable data available inmemory. A typical computer system will usually include at least aprocessor, memory, and a device (e.g., a bus) coupling the memory to theprocessor.

Software can be stored in the non-volatile memory and/or the drive unit.Indeed, for large programs, it may not even be possible to store theentire program in the memory. Nevertheless, it should be understood thatfor software to run, if necessary, it is moved to a computer readablelocation appropriate for processing, and for illustrative purposes, thatlocation is referred to as the memory herein. Even when software ismoved to the memory for execution, the processor can make use ofhardware registers to store values associated with the software, andlocal cache that, ideally, serves to speed up execution. As used herein,a software program is assumed to be stored at any known or convenientlocation (from non-volatile storage to hardware registers), when thesoftware program is referred to as “implemented in a computer-readablemedium.” A processor is considered to be “configured to execute aprogram” when at least one value associated with the program is storedin a register readable by the processor.

The bus can also couple the processor to the network interface device.The interface can include one or more of a modem or network interface.It will be appreciated that a modem or network interface can beconsidered to be part of the computer system. The interface can includean analog modem, Integrated Services Digital network (ISDN0 modem, cablemodem, token ring interface, satellite transmission interface (e.g.,“direct PC”), or other interfaces for coupling a computer system toother computer systems. The interface can include one or more inputand/or output (I/O) devices. The I/O devices can include, by way ofexample but not limitation, a keyboard, a mouse or other pointingdevice, disk drives, printers, a scanner, and other input and/or outputdevices, including a display device. The display device can include, byway of example but not limitation, a cathode ray tube (CRT), liquidcrystal display (LCD), or some other applicable known or convenientdisplay device.

In operation, the computer system can be controlled by operating systemsoftware that includes a file management system, such as a diskoperating system. One example of operating system software withassociated file management system software is the family of operatingsystems known as Windows® from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash.,and their associated file management systems. Another example ofoperating system software with its associated file management systemsoftware is the Linux™ operating system and its associated filemanagement system. The file management system can be stored in thenon-volatile memory and/or drive unit and can cause the processor toexecute the various acts required by the operating system to input andoutput data and to store data in the memory, including storing files onthe non-volatile memory and/or drive unit.

Some portions of the detailed description may be presented in terms ofalgorithms and symbolic representations of operations on data bitswithin a computer memory. These algorithmic descriptions andrepresentations are the means used by those skilled in the dataprocessing arts to most effectively convey the substance of their workto others skilled in the art. An algorithm is here, and generally,conceived to be a self-consistent sequence of operations leading to adesired result. The operations are those requiring physicalmanipulations of physical quantities. Usually, though not necessarily,these quantities take the form of electrical or magnetic signals capableof being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwisemanipulated. It has proven convenient at times, principally for reasonsof common usage, to refer to these signals as bits, values, elements,symbols, characters, terms, numbers, or the like.

It should be borne in mind, however, that all of these and similar termsare to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and aremerely convenient labels applied to these quantities. Unlessspecifically stated otherwise as apparent from the following discussion,it is appreciated that throughout the description, discussions utilizingterms such as “processing” or “computing” or “calculating” or“determining” or “displaying” or “generating” or the like, refer to theaction and processes of a computer system, or similar electroniccomputing device, that manipulates and transforms data represented asphysical (electronic) quantities within registers and memories of thecomputer system into other data similarly represented as physicalquantities within the computer system memories or registers or othersuch information storage, transmission or display devices.

The algorithms and displays presented herein are not inherently relatedto any particular computer or other apparatus. Various general purposesystems may be used with programs in accordance with the teachingsherein, or it may prove convenient to construct more specializedapparatus to perform the methods of some examples. The requiredstructure for a variety of these systems will appear from thedescription below. In addition, the techniques are not described withreference to any particular programming language, and various examplesmay thus be implemented using a variety of programming languages.

In various implementations, the system operates as a standalone deviceor may be connected (e.g., networked) to other systems. In a networkeddeployment, the system may operate in the capacity of a server or aclient system in a client-server network environment, or as a peersystem in a peer-to-peer (or distributed) network environment.

The system may be a server computer, a client computer, a personalcomputer (PC), a tablet PC, a laptop computer, a set-top box (STB), apersonal digital assistant (PDA), a cellular telephone, an iPhone, aBlackberry, a processor, a telephone, a web appliance, a network router,switch or bridge, or any system capable of executing a set ofinstructions (sequential or otherwise) that specify actions to be takenby that system.

While the machine-readable medium or machine-readable storage medium isshown, by way of example, to be a single medium, the term“machine-readable medium” and “machine-readable storage medium” shouldbe taken to include a single medium or multiple media (e.g., acentralized or distributed database, and/or associated caches andservers) that store the one or more sets of instructions. The term“machine-readable medium” and “machine-readable storage medium” shallalso be taken to include any medium that is capable of storing,encoding, or carrying a set of instructions for execution by the systemand that cause the system to perform any one or more of themethodologies or modules of disclosed herein.

In general, the routines executed to implement the implementations ofthe disclosure, may be implemented as part of an operating system or aspecific application, component, program, object, module or sequence ofinstructions referred to as “computer programs.” The computer programstypically comprise one or more instructions set at various times invarious memory and storage devices in a computer, and that, when readand executed by one or more processing units or processors in acomputer, cause the computer to perform operations to execute elementsinvolving the various aspects of the disclosure.

Moreover, while examples have been described in the context of fullyfunctioning computers and computer systems, those skilled in the artwill appreciate that the various examples are capable of beingdistributed as a program object in a variety of forms, and that thedisclosure applies equally regardless of the particular type of machineor computer-readable media used to actually effect the distribution.

Further examples of machine-readable storage media, machine-readablemedia, or computer-readable (storage) media include but are not limitedto recordable type media such as volatile and non-volatile memorydevices, floppy and other removable disks, hard disk drives, opticaldisks (e.g., Compact Disk Read-Only Memory (CD ROMS), Digital VersatileDisks, (DVDs), etc.), among others, and transmission type media such asdigital and analog communication links.

In some circumstances, operation of a memory device, such as a change instate from a binary one to a binary zero or vice-versa, for example, maycomprise a transformation, such as a physical transformation. Withparticular types of memory devices, such a physical transformation maycomprise a physical transformation of an article to a different state orthing. For example, but without limitation, for some types of memorydevices, a change in state may involve an accumulation and storage ofcharge or a release of stored charge. Likewise, in other memory devices,a change of state may comprise a physical change or transformation inmagnetic orientation or a physical change or transformation in molecularstructure, such as from crystalline to amorphous or vice versa. Theforegoing is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all examples inwhich a change in state for a binary one to a binary zero or vice-versain a memory device may comprise a transformation, such as a physicaltransformation. Rather, the foregoing is intended as illustrativeexamples.

A storage medium typically may be non-transitory or comprise anon-transitory device. In this context, a non-transitory storage mediummay include a device that is tangible, meaning that the device has aconcrete physical form, although the device may change its physicalstate. Thus, for example, non-transitory refers to a device remainingtangible despite this change in state.

The above description and drawings are illustrative and are not to beconstrued as limiting the subject matter to the precise forms disclosed.Persons skilled in the relevant art can appreciate that manymodifications and variations are possible in light of the abovedisclosure. Numerous specific details are described to provide athorough understanding of the disclosure. However, in certain instances,well-known or conventional details are not described in order to avoidobscuring the description.

As used herein, the terms “connected,” “coupled,” or any variant thereofwhen applying to modules of a system, means any connection or coupling,either direct or indirect, between two or more elements; the coupling ofconnection between the elements can be physical, logical, or anycombination thereof. Additionally, the words “herein,” “above,” “below,”and words of similar import, when used in this application, shall referto this application as a whole and not to any particular portions ofthis application. Where the context permits, words in the above DetailedDescription using the singular or plural number may also include theplural or singular number respectively. The word “or,” in reference to alist of two or more items, covers all of the following interpretationsof the word: any of the items in the list, all of the items in the list,or any combination of the items in the list.

Those of skill in the art will appreciate that the disclosed subjectmatter may be embodied in other forms and manners not shown below. It isunderstood that the use of relational terms, if any, such as first,second, top and bottom, and the like are used solely for distinguishingone entity or action from another, without necessarily requiring orimplying any such actual relationship or order between such entities oractions.

While processes or blocks are presented in a given order, alternativeimplementations may perform routines having steps, or employ systemshaving blocks, in a different order, and some processes or blocks may bedeleted, moved, added, subdivided, substituted, combined, and/ormodified to provide alternative or sub combinations. Each of theseprocesses or blocks may be implemented in a variety of different ways.Also, while processes or blocks are at times shown as being performed inseries, these processes or blocks may instead be performed in parallel,or may be performed at different times. Further any specific numbersnoted herein are only examples: alternative implementations may employdiffering values or ranges.

The teachings of the disclosure provided herein can be applied to othersystems, not necessarily the system described above. The elements andacts of the various examples described above can be combined to providefurther examples.

Any patents and applications and other references noted above, includingany that may be listed in accompanying filing papers, are incorporatedherein by reference. Aspects of the disclosure can be modified, ifnecessary, to employ the systems, functions, and concepts of the variousreferences described above to provide yet further examples of thedisclosure.

These and other changes can be made to the disclosure in light of theabove Detailed Description. While the above description describescertain examples, and describes the best mode contemplated, no matterhow detailed the above appears in text, the teachings can be practicedin many ways. Details of the system may vary considerably in itsimplementation details, while still being encompassed by the subjectmatter disclosed herein. As noted above, particular terminology usedwhen describing certain features or aspects of the disclosure should notbe taken to imply that the terminology is being redefined herein to berestricted to any specific characteristics, features, or aspects of thedisclosure with which that terminology is associated. In general, theterms used in the following claims should not be construed to limit thedisclosure to the specific implementations disclosed in thespecification, unless the above Detailed Description section explicitlydefines such terms. Accordingly, the actual scope of the disclosureencompasses not only the disclosed implementations, but also allequivalent ways of practicing or implementing the disclosure under theclaims.

While certain aspects of the disclosure are presented below in certainclaim forms, the inventors contemplate the various aspects of thedisclosure in any number of claim forms. Any claims intended to betreated under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f) will begin with the words “means for”.Accordingly, the applicant reserves the right to add additional claimsafter filing the application to pursue such additional claim forms forother aspects of the disclosure.

The terms used in this specification generally have their ordinarymeanings in the art, within the context of the disclosure, and in thespecific context where each term is used. Certain terms that are used todescribe the disclosure are discussed above, or elsewhere in thespecification, to provide additional guidance to the practitionerregarding the description of the disclosure. For convenience, certainterms may be highlighted, for example using capitalization, italics,and/or quotation marks. The use of highlighting has no influence on thescope and meaning of a term; the scope and meaning of a term is thesame, in the same context, whether or not it is highlighted. It will beappreciated that same element can be described in more than one way.

Consequently, alternative language and synonyms may be used for any oneor more of the terms discussed herein, nor is any special significanceto be placed upon whether or not a term is elaborated or discussedherein. Synonyms for certain terms are provided. A recital of one ormore synonyms does not exclude the use of other synonyms. The use ofexamples anywhere in this specification including examples of any termsdiscussed herein is illustrative only, and is not intended to furtherlimit the scope and meaning of the disclosure or of any exemplifiedterm. Likewise, the disclosure is not limited to various examples givenin this specification.

Without intent to further limit the scope of the disclosure, examples ofinstruments, apparatus, methods and their related results according tothe examples of the present disclosure are given below. Note that titlesor subtitles may be used in the examples for convenience of a reader,which in no way should limit the scope of the disclosure. Unlessotherwise defined, all technical and scientific terms used herein havethe same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in theart to which this disclosure pertains. In the case of conflict, thepresent document, including definitions will control.

Some portions of this description describe examples in terms ofalgorithms and symbolic representations of operations on information.These algorithmic descriptions and representations are commonly used bythose skilled in the data processing arts to convey the substance oftheir work effectively to others skilled in the art. These operations,while described functionally, computationally, or logically, areunderstood to be implemented by computer programs or equivalentelectrical circuits, microcode, or the like. Furthermore, it has alsoproven convenient at times, to refer to these arrangements of operationsas modules, without loss of generality. The described operations andtheir associated modules may be embodied in software, firmware,hardware, or any combinations thereof.

Any of the steps, operations, or processes described herein may beperformed or implemented with one or more hardware or software modules,alone or in combination with other devices. In some examples, a softwaremodule is implemented with a computer program object comprising acomputer-readable medium containing computer program code, which can beexecuted by a computer processor for performing any or all of the steps,operations, or processes described.

Examples may also relate to an apparatus for performing the operationsherein. This apparatus may be specially constructed for the requiredpurposes, and/or it may comprise a general-purpose computing deviceselectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored inthe computer. Such a computer program may be stored in a non-transitory,tangible computer readable storage medium, or any type of media suitablefor storing electronic instructions, which may be coupled to a computersystem bus. Furthermore, any computing systems referred to in thespecification may include a single processor or may be architecturesemploying multiple processor designs for increased computing capability.

Examples may also relate to an object that is produced by a computingprocess described herein. Such an object may comprise informationresulting from a computing process, where the information is stored on anon-transitory, tangible computer readable storage medium and mayinclude any implementation of a computer program object or other datacombination described herein.

The language used in the specification has been principally selected forreadability and instructional purposes, and it may not have beenselected to delineate or circumscribe the subject matter. It istherefore intended that the scope of this disclosure be limited not bythis detailed description, but rather by any claims that issue on anapplication based hereon. Accordingly, the disclosure of the examples isintended to be illustrative, but not limiting, of the scope of thesubject matter, which is set forth in the following claims.

Specific details were given in the preceding description to provide athorough understanding of various implementations of systems andcomponents for a contextual connection system. It will be understood byone of ordinary skill in the art, however, that the implementationsdescribed above may be practiced without these specific details. Forexample, circuits, systems, networks, processes, and other componentsmay be shown as components in block diagram form in order not to obscurethe embodiments in unnecessary detail. In other instances, well-knowncircuits, processes, algorithms, structures, and techniques may be shownwithout unnecessary detail in order to avoid obscuring the embodiments.

It is also noted that individual implementations may be described as aprocess which is depicted as a flowchart, a flow diagram, a data flowdiagram, a structure diagram, or a block diagram. Although a flowchartmay describe the operations as a sequential process, many of theoperations can be performed in parallel or concurrently. In addition,the order of the operations may be re-arranged. A process is terminatedwhen its operations are completed, but could have additional steps notincluded in a figure. A process may correspond to a method, a function,a procedure, a subroutine, a subprogram, etc. When a process correspondsto a function, its termination can correspond to a return of thefunction to the calling function or the main function.

Client devices, network devices, and other devices can be computingsystems that include one or more integrated circuits, input devices,output devices, data storage devices, and/or network interfaces, amongother things. The integrated circuits can include, for example, one ormore processors, volatile memory, and/or non-volatile memory, amongother things. The input devices can include, for example, a keyboard, amouse, a key pad, a touch interface, a microphone, a camera, and/orother types of input devices. The output devices can include, forexample, a display screen, a speaker, a haptic feedback system, aprinter, and/or other types of output devices. A data storage device,such as a hard drive or flash memory, can enable the computing device totemporarily or permanently store data. A network interface, such as awireless or wired interface, can enable the computing device tocommunicate with a network. Examples of computing devices includedesktop computers, laptop computers, server computers, hand-heldcomputers, tablets, smart phones, personal digital assistants, digitalhome assistants, as well as machines and apparatuses in which acomputing device has been incorporated.

The term “computer-readable medium” includes, but is not limited to,portable or non-portable storage devices, optical storage devices, andvarious other mediums capable of storing, containing, or carryinginstruction(s) and/or data. A computer-readable medium may include anon-transitory medium in which data can be stored and that does notinclude carrier waves and/or transitory electronic signals propagatingwirelessly or over wired connections. Examples of a non-transitorymedium may include, but are not limited to, a magnetic disk or tape,optical storage media such as compact disk (CD) or digital versatiledisk (DVD), flash memory, memory or memory devices. A computer-readablemedium may have stored thereon code and/or machine-executableinstructions that may represent a procedure, a function, a subprogram, aprogram, a routine, a subroutine, a module, a software package, a class,or any combination of instructions, data structures, or programstatements. A code segment may be coupled to another code segment or ahardware circuit by passing and/or receiving information, data,arguments, parameters, or memory contents. Information, arguments,parameters, data, etc. may be passed, forwarded, or transmitted via anysuitable means including memory sharing, message passing, token passing,network transmission, or the like.

The various examples discussed above may further be implemented byhardware, software, firmware, middleware, microcode, hardwaredescription languages, or any combination thereof. When implemented insoftware, firmware, middleware or microcode, the program code or codesegments to perform the necessary tasks (e.g., a computer-programproduct) may be stored in a computer-readable or machine-readablestorage medium (e.g., a medium for storing program code or codesegments). A processor(s), implemented in an integrated circuit, mayperform the necessary tasks.

Where components are described as being “configured to” perform certainoperations, such configuration can be accomplished, for example, bydesigning electronic circuits or other hardware to perform theoperation, by programming programmable electronic circuits (e.g.,microprocessors, or other suitable electronic circuits) to perform theoperation, or any combination thereof.

The various illustrative logical blocks, modules, circuits, andalgorithm steps described in connection with the implementationsdisclosed herein may be implemented as electronic hardware, computersoftware, firmware, or combinations thereof. To clearly illustrate thisinterchangeability of hardware and software, various illustrativecomponents, blocks, modules, circuits, and steps have been describedabove generally in terms of their functionality. Whether suchfunctionality is implemented as hardware or software depends upon theparticular application and design constraints imposed on the overallsystem. Skilled artisans may implement the described functionality invarying ways for each particular application, but such implementationdecisions should not be interpreted as causing a departure from thescope of the present disclosure.

The techniques described herein may also be implemented in electronichardware, computer software, firmware, or any combination thereof. Suchtechniques may be implemented in any of a variety of devices such asgeneral purposes computers, wireless communication device handsets, orintegrated circuit devices having multiple uses including application inwireless communication device handsets and other devices. Any featuresdescribed as modules or components may be implemented together in anintegrated logic device or separately as discrete but interoperablelogic devices. If implemented in software, the techniques may berealized at least in part by a computer-readable data storage mediumcomprising program code including instructions that, when executed,performs one or more of the methods described above. Thecomputer-readable data storage medium may form part of a computerprogram product, which may include packaging materials. Thecomputer-readable medium may comprise memory or data storage media, suchas random access memory (RAM) such as synchronous dynamic random accessmemory (SDRAM), read-only memory (ROM), non-volatile random accessmemory (NVRAM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory(EEPROM), FLASH memory, magnetic or optical data storage media, and thelike. The techniques additionally, or alternatively, may be realized atleast in part by a computer-readable communication medium that carriesor communicates program code in the form of instructions or datastructures and that can be accessed, read, and/or executed by acomputer, such as propagated signals or waves.

The program code may be executed by a processor, which may include oneor more processors, such as one or more digital signal processors(DSPs), general purpose microprocessors, an application specificintegrated circuits (ASICs), field programmable logic arrays (FPGAs), orother equivalent integrated or discrete logic circuitry. Such aprocessor may be configured to perform any of the techniques describedin this disclosure. A general purpose processor may be a microprocessor;but in the alternative, the processor may be any conventional processor,controller, microcontroller, or state machine. A processor may also beimplemented as a combination of computing devices, e.g., a combinationof a DSP and a microprocessor, a plurality of microprocessors, one ormore microprocessors in conjunction with a DSP core, or any other suchconfiguration. Accordingly, the term “processor,” as used herein mayrefer to any of the foregoing structure, any combination of theforegoing structure, or any other structure or apparatus suitable forimplementation of the techniques described herein. In addition, in someaspects, the functionality described herein may be provided withindedicated software modules or hardware modules configured forimplementing a suspended database update system.

The foregoing detailed description of the technology has been presentedfor purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to beexhaustive or to limit the technology to the precise form disclosed.Many modifications and variations are possible in light of the aboveteaching. The described embodiments were chosen in order to best explainthe principles of the technology, its practical application, and toenable others skilled in the art to utilize the technology in variousembodiments and with various modifications as are suited to theparticular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of thetechnology be defined by the claim.

1. (canceled)
 2. A computer-implemented method comprising: determiningin real-time a spatial vicinity and a field of view associated with auser within a virtual three-dimensional room, wherein the virtualthree-dimensional room includes a set of interactable elements;identifying a subset of interactable elements from the set ofinteractable elements, wherein the subset is identified as a result ofthe subset being within the spatial vicinity and the field of viewassociated with the user; providing element data corresponding to thesubset within the spatial vicinity and the field of view associated withthe user, wherein when the element data is received, the element datacauses a device corresponding to the user to display the subset;detecting in real-time user movement within the virtualthree-dimensional room, wherein the user movement causes an interactableelement from the subset to no longer be within the spatial vicinity andthe field of view associated with the user; and providing updatedelement data corresponding to the subset, wherein when the updatedelement data is received, the updated element data causes the devicecorresponding to the user to unload the interactable element.
 3. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein: the user movementfurther causes another interactable element from the set of interactableelements to be within the spatial vicinity or the field of viewassociated with the user; and the computer-implemented method furthercomprises providing new element data corresponding to the otherinteractable element, wherein when the new element data is received, thenew element data causes the device to display the other interactableelement.
 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, furthercomprising: dynamically updating in real-time a fidelity associated withone or more interactive elements of the subset based on a spatialproximity of the user to the one or more interactable elements, whereinthe fidelity is dynamically updated in real-time as the user movement isdetected.
 5. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, furthercomprising: monitoring a set of performance characteristics associatedwith the user device; and dynamically adjusting in real-time apresentation of the subset, wherein the presentation is dynamicallyadjusted according to the set of performance characteristics.
 6. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 2, further comprising: detecting inreal-time movement of a different interactive element within the virtualthree-dimensional room into the spatial vicinity or the field of viewassociated with the user; and providing new element data correspondingto the different interactable element, wherein when the new element datais received, the new element data causes the device to display thedifferent interactable element.
 7. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 2, further comprising: determining in real-time a change to aspatial proximity to an interactable element of the subset, wherein thechange is determined as a result of the user movement; and dynamicallyupdating in real-time data presented in association with theinteractable element according to the change.
 8. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the virtualthree-dimensional room is created using a real time stream processor(RSP), and wherein when the virtual three-dimensional room is created,the RSP automatically executes one or more plugins.
 9. A system,comprising: one or more processors; and memory storing thereoninstructions that, as a result of being executed by the one or moreprocessors, cause the system to: determine in real-time a spatialvicinity and a field of view associated with a user within a virtualthree-dimensional room, wherein the virtual three-dimensional roomincludes a set of interactable elements; identify a subset ofinteractable elements from the set of interactable elements, wherein thesubset is identified as a result of the subset being within the spatialvicinity and the field of view associated with the user; provide elementdata corresponding to the subset within the spatial vicinity and thefield of view associated with the user, wherein when the element data isreceived, the element data causes a device corresponding to the user todisplay the subset; detect in real-time user movement within the virtualthree-dimensional room, wherein the user movement causes an interactableelement from the subset to no longer be within the spatial vicinity andthe field of view associated with the user; and provide updated elementdata corresponding to the subset, wherein when the updated element datais received, the updated element data causes the device corresponding tothe user to unload the interactable element.
 10. The system of claim 9,wherein: the user movement further causes another interactable elementfrom the set of interactable elements to be within the spatial vicinityor the field of view associated with the user; and the instructionsfurther cause the system to provide new element data corresponding tothe other interactable element, wherein when the new element data isreceived, the new element data causes the device to display the otherinteractable element.
 11. The system of claim 9, wherein theinstructions further cause the system to: dynamically update inreal-time a fidelity associated with one or more interactive elements ofthe subset based on a spatial proximity of the user to the one or moreinteractable elements, wherein the fidelity is dynamically updated inreal-time as the user movement is detected.
 12. The system of claim 9,wherein the instructions further cause the system to: monitor a set ofperformance characteristics associated with the user device; anddynamically adjust in real-time a presentation of the subset, whereinthe presentation is dynamically adjusted according to the set ofperformance characteristics.
 13. The system of claim 9, wherein theinstructions further cause the system to: detect in real-time movementof a different interactive element within the virtual three-dimensionalroom into the spatial vicinity or the field of view associated with theuser; and provide new element data corresponding to the differentinteractable element, wherein when the new element data is received, thenew element data causes the device to display the different interactableelement.
 14. The system of claim 9, wherein the instructions furthercause the system to: determine in real-time a change to a spatialproximity to an interactable element of the subset, wherein the changeis determined as a result of the user movement; and dynamically updatein real-time data presented in association with the interactable elementaccording to the change.
 15. The system of claim 9, wherein the virtualthree-dimensional room is created using a real time stream processor(RSP), and wherein when the virtual three-dimensional room is created,the RSP automatically executes one or more plugins.
 16. Anon-transitory, computer-readable storage medium storing thereonexecutable instructions that, as a result of being executed by one ormore processors of a computer system, cause the computer system to:determine in real-time a spatial vicinity and a field of view associatedwith a user within a virtual three-dimensional room, wherein the virtualthree-dimensional room includes a set of interactable elements; identifya subset of interactable elements from the set of interactable elements,wherein the subset is identified as a result of the subset being withinthe spatial vicinity and the field of view associated with the user;provide element data corresponding to the subset within the spatialvicinity and the field of view associated with the user, wherein whenthe element data is received, the element data causes a devicecorresponding to the user to display the subset; detect in real-timeuser movement within the virtual three-dimensional room, wherein theuser movement causes an interactable element from the subset to nolonger be within the spatial vicinity and the field of view associatedwith the user; and provide updated element data corresponding to thesubset, wherein when the updated element data is received, the updatedelement data causes the device corresponding to the user to unload theinteractable element.
 17. The non-transitory, computer-readable storagemedium of claim 16, wherein: the user movement further causes anotherinteractable element from the set of interactable elements to be withinthe spatial vicinity or the field of view associated with the user; andthe executable instructions further cause the computer system to providenew element data corresponding to the other interactable element,wherein when the new element data is received, the new element datacauses the device to display the other interactable element.
 18. Thenon-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, whereinthe executable instructions further cause the computer system to:dynamically update in real-time a fidelity associated with one or moreinteractive elements of the subset based on a spatial proximity of theuser to the one or more interactable elements, wherein the fidelity isdynamically updated in real-time as the user movement is detected. 19.The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 16,wherein the executable instructions further cause the computer systemto: monitor a set of performance characteristics associated with theuser device; and dynamically adjust in real-time a presentation of thesubset, wherein the presentation is dynamically adjusted according tothe set of performance characteristics.
 20. The non-transitory,computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the executableinstructions further cause the computer system to: detect in real-timemovement of a different interactive element within the virtualthree-dimensional room into the spatial vicinity or the field of viewassociated with the user; and provide new element data corresponding tothe different interactable element, wherein when the new element data isreceived, the new element data causes the device to display thedifferent interactable element.
 21. The non-transitory,computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the executableinstructions further cause the computer system to: determine inreal-time a change to a spatial proximity to an interactable element ofthe subset, wherein the change is determined as a result of the usermovement; and dynamically update in real-time data presented inassociation with the interactable element according to the change. 22.The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 16,wherein the virtual three-dimensional room is created using a real timestream processor (RSP), and wherein when the virtual three-dimensionalroom is created, the RSP automatically executes one or more plugins.